


Made of Stars

by KagekaNecavi



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Cap_Ironman Big Bang 2015, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Jane Foster is Thor, M/M, Multi, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Temporary Character Death, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 20:07:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5261765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KagekaNecavi/pseuds/KagekaNecavi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep in the heart of World War II, Steve, Bucky, the Invaders, and the Howling Commandos are getting close to finding the portion of Hydra controlled by the Red Skull and defeating him. As they close in, they receive intelligence that he has am unusual escape method - a machine powered by a mysterious gem that might give Skull the ability to move through time. This seems like a red herring to them, but when Steve and Bucky corner Skull, he uses it.</p><p>Steve and Bucky follow Skull and the next thing Steve knows, he’s waking up on a spaceship called the Avenger and the Red Skull - who went back in time, not forward - has ruled the known galaxy for the last several hundred years. Now he’s working with the rebels to usurp the Red Skull and trying to navigate this strange, amazing new world with his new friends and companions at his side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made of Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2015 Cap-Iron Man Big Bang! My artist was the lovely [Amaratony](http://amaratony.tumblr.com/), and her art is [here](http://amaratony.tumblr.com/post/133718249859/art-for-made-of-stars-by-kagecanecavi-for-the-2015). It is extremely beautiful, and you should definitely go check it out! It is of a scene of Tony and Steve early in the fic, so if you want to avoid spoilers look at it after you read, but I don't think it's hugely spoilery, personally. 
> 
> If you require details in regards to specific content warnings, please see the end of the fic!

Steve ran through the fortress, footsteps echoing hollowly in the wide halls, Bucky at his heels. The fight against Hydra, within the war, had lasted for years, sometimes they’d shut down one base or another, but this would be their biggest success. This was the Red Skull’s main base of operations, and he was inside somewhere. They’d planned for every eventuality they could think of, the Invaders and Howling Commandos working together, everyone but Steve and Bucky in charge of their own squad of soldiers.

Every exit and entrance was covered, thanks to rumors that their intelligence gathering had scrounged up about some fool proof escape method that Skull had devised. Something supposedly completely undetectable, because it didn't even use the exits. That sounded like it was complete and utter nonsense, designed to throw them off of Skull’s real escape plan, so they’d kept every precaution. Still, though. Steve didn’t want to discount any idea just because it seemed unrealistic, and he was going to keep an eye out for any unusual activity.

They turned a corner and came out onto a catwalk over a room full of soldiers, guns, and tanks with Skull in the center at a control panel. He fiddled with some dials and some buttons, and then pressed a large button. There was a flash of yellowish orange light, and when the light faded everything on the same level as Skull was gone.

Steve could feel an odd tingle run down his spine. They hadn’t just vanished or disintegrated, he  _knew_. They had gone somewhere.

He glanced around until he spotted a ladder going down to the floor beneath them, where Skull had been, and quickly went down it and ran over to the control panel. Most of the buttons were unlabeled, but there were a few words that were on the panel, over dials that were spinning endlessly. Jahr, Monat, Tag. Year, month, day? Steve frowned and shook his head a little. This escape plan was both confusing and just as mysterious as their intelligence had promised.

“What’s the plan, Cap?” Bucky asked, jogging up beside him.

“Follow them,” Steve slammed his hand down on the button Skull had used, and he felt as if he were being torn apart. Beside him, Bucky screamed.

Then everything went dark.

* * *

 

Steve regained consciousness suddenly, a hard surface beneath him and voices surrounding him. The language sounded a little bit like German, but strange and changed in ways he’d never heard in any regional dialect or accent. Then one voice cut through, a strong female voice speaking in almost archaic sounding English.

“Enough! We wait until he awakens. We know not why he is here, and it will doubtless be cleared up when he wakes,” The woman said, authority singing in her voice. While Steve didn’t understand what they said in response, the tone of agreement was unmistakable.

He didn’t feel any restraints on him, though he also didn’t feel the reassuring weight of his shield on his arm, and so he decided that perhaps the best course of action would be to just reveal that he was awake. He could deal with things from there.

Opening his eyes, he blinked at his surroundings, confused. He was laying on a soft bed in what he could tell was some kind of medical ward, though he’d never seen one that looked quite like this before. The walls were pastel and the floor was made of some kind of smooth white material. There were several beds similar to the one that he was laying on, each bed fitted with tight white sheets, a warm looking blanket folded over and set at the end and a fluffy pillow at the head. He wasn’t covered in the blanket on his bed, but he was still wearing his Captain America uniform, though the helmet and the shield were resting on the floor at the end of the bed.

The almost German came again, and Steve looked sharply around at the people standing around the bed he was in. The man who had spoken stood near the head of the bed and was tall, with sharp, clever blue eyes and black hair. He wore a shirt of dark grey and black, with black slacks, of a material that Steve had never seen before, but it looked like most of the people in the room were wearing similar clothes. The first man was standing close to a second about the same height but a bit broader, with dark skin and eyes and wearing similar clothes. At his waist there was a holster, and what Steve could see of the weapon looked almost wholly unfamiliar. It was shaped like a gun, but that was about it.

Steve’s eyes skipped over to a woman standing beside them, further down the bed, and wore something that looked like it belonged in a picture book about Vikings: a long red cloak fastened underneath a metal chest piece that only went halfway down her torso, her abdomen covered by sturdy looking black leather. The upper half of her face was masked with an ornate helm that also seemed entirely functional, wings sprouting from above either ear and blonde hair spilling out behind her, and she held a squat, thick hammer in one hand.

The blue eyed man spoke again, and Steve’s eyes flicked to him. The man gestured with his hands, up and down Steve’s body and pointing to the shield, then he sighed and rolled his eyes, reaching for one wall. A drawer opened up along the wall and Steve frowned at the item that the man pulled out. It was shaped like a gun, and the man fitted a tube and a needle into it - some manner of injection, then. Steve waited until the man was close and had almost pressed the needle, which had now nearly vanished inside the casing of the gun-like injection device, against Steve’s neck before Steve moved, grabbing the man’s wrist and twisting.

The man gave a pained shout, but twisted along with Steve so that Steve wouldn’t damage his wrist. The other man took a few steps forward, reaching out but not making a move towards his weapon. On the other hand, the woman did wield her hammer.

“Release him!!” She bellowed, raising the hammer, and Steve felt the hairs on his arms rise, static crackling through the air. Steve let go, frowning.

“Why do you speak English and they don’t?” Steve asked, scooting towards the head of the bed to keep them all in his sights. The man rubbed at his wrist, which was red with the pressure of Steve’s grip. He was surprised, honestly, that it wasn’t broken.

“I have the Allspeak. I speak any and every language, and as such I can communicate with you without the translation nanotech,” The woman said, lowering the hammer. The static went away, and Steve relaxed a little.

“Nanotech?” He frowned a little.

“Nano - small. Tech - technology. Nanotech - small technology,” She explained. “It is what Anthony has in his syringe.”

“So if it’s small technology that translates, then does that mean that if he injects it in me, I’ll be able to understand him? Is that what you’re saying?” Steve asked, frowning a little bit.

“Yes. That is exactly what I’m saying,” She nodded and gestured to the blue eyed man. “Will you allow him? They can understand you, but you cannot understand anyone but myself until you allow yourself to be injected.”

Steve thought about that for a long moment. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

The man took a slow, deliberate step forward and pressed the needle to Steve’s neck, just below his ear, and pulled the trigger. It hurt for a moment, then the pain ceased. The blue eyed man watched him for a long moment and asked, questioningly, “So, you hearing us?”

“Yes, I can understand you now,” Steve nodded. He settled on the bed a little and then asked, “Now, where am I and who are all of you?”

“You’re on the _Avenger_. Feel it humming?” The blue eyed man said, tapping his foot on the ground. Now that it was brought to his attention, Steve did realize there was a very distinct and very faint humming noise, a vibration in the bed. He got off the bed and stood on the floor, and it was more prominent, but it still wasn’t particularly strong. It felt almost like he was on a very well run aircraft.

“I do. What is it? _Where am I_?”

“The _Avenger_  is a ship. A spaceship. We’re basically in the middle of intersystem space. I have no idea how you got here, but you showed up in the middle of the engine room early yesterday morning,” The man said, “You were unconscious. We had our doctor bring you here and we’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since. My name is Tony Stark. I’m the ship’s engineer.”

“I’m Steve Rogers,” Steve held out his hand, and Tony smiled, oddly knowingly, reaching out and shaking it.

“Jim Rhodes,” the other man said, smiling. “I’m one of our pilots. I fly the _Avenger_  as well as our Defenders, which are our small fighters that we use in ship to ship combat.”

“And I am Thor,” the woman said, nodding her head regally.

“Thor? Like the god?” Steve asked, frowning a little bit and glancing over her. After the war started, after the things he’d seen, he’d made sure to read up on his mythology. With the hammer and the static that she’d generated , she did seem very much like the god he’d heard of.

“I am the goddess of thunder, yes,” Thor nodded, smiling, “I am honored that you recognize me. You are, after all, Captain America, are you not?”

“Yes, I am. How do you know me?” Steve looked between them, “What is all of this? You said I was in intersystem space? This technology is way past anything I’ve ever seen. And Hydra had some unbelievable things.”

“We know that it’s been hundreds of years since your time,” Jim said, “Though we aren’t certain exactly how long. The Red Skull’s escape route was a time machine. He used it to go backwards in time with a battalion of tanks and soldiers, and took over an era that had a military far less advanced than what he’d brought with him. Through a mixture of magic and technology, Skull has survived ever since, ruling the world, and later as much of the galaxy as he can. He used to rule from Earth, but now his base is on a world called Schädel. You managed to leave before the ripple in time erased your timeline, and that’s why we aren’t sure how long it’s been.”

Steve looked between them, saw how serious they looked, and frowned. "It's been hundreds of years? That's how you do that? That’s how all of this is possible?" He gestured vaguely to where the translation technology had been injected into him. There was a sort of numb, terrified feeling sinking in. If it had been hundreds of years, everyone he knew would be dead. Their children would be dead. Their grandchildren would be dead.

"Yes it is. It's how we manage all kinds of things," Tony said. He paused, an inky black film covering his eyes for a moment before clearing up, then he said, "We can show you. Follow me."

"I ... Okay," Steve nodded, getting off the bed and grabbing the shield. Tony arched an eyebrow, lips quirking, but didn't protest.

When they were out of hearing range for a normal human but not Steve, he heard Thor say, "We must change our heading. The Soldier needs to meet the good Captain immediately."

“Yeah, you’re right. Come on, let’s see if Jen and Carol are in the cockpit,” Jim said, and then Steve and Tony were completely out of hearing.

They went through several halls that were quite different than the medical room had been. Where that room had been pale and comforting, these halls are dark and futuristic, the metal under their feet making soft clanging noises as they walked over it. Eventually they reached a room that appeared to have a large window on one side, a gorgeous expanse of stars visible.

Steve walked closer, transfixed. It was  _gorgeous_. He got close enough to put his hand on the window, which was thin and clear, peering out curiously.

“By the way,” Tony said, after a long moment. Steve looked back over at him, confused at the pleased serenity he saw on Tony’s face. Not that this wasn’t enough to make anyone serene, but Tony must have been able to see this whenever he wanted. “You can’t tell anyone about the translator chip. Um, chip is short for microchip, which is another word for them.”

“Why not? It’s amazing technology,” Steve asked, frowning. Tony looked even more pleased, but in something of a smug way, even as he answered.

“Because Red Skull doesn’t want people to be able to communicate with each other. If we can communicate we can plan, and if we can plan then we can overthrow him. He’s a dictator, and the first thing a dictator wants is to suppress their people’s free speech. He controls much of the galaxy, with the exception of Asgard and a few other places that generally refuse to involve themselves, and when we can’t even talk to each other freely, then our speech has been suppressed at the most basic level,” Tony said, getting more passionate the further he spoke, finally closing his mouth with a click of teeth.

Steve smiled a little, tilting his head. “You fight against him, don’t you?”

Tony let out a little laugh and nodded. “We were going to wait to tell you, but I guess I blew it.”

“It’s pretty obvious, with how passionate you are. Either you fight against him or you want to,” Steve shrugged, smiling at him, amused by the expressions on Tony’s face and finding no small amount of heat pooling in his belly as he watched Tony. He turned back to the window and gazed out at it, sighing a little. “This is so beautiful. It must be horrible living in a world ruled by the Red Skull, but this is gorgeous.”

“Living on the ships helps,” Tony said, and Steve could feel Tony’s eyes on him. “There are so many of us living off world now that it’s hard for him to keep track of us until we try to do something organized, like rebel. Which is exactly what we’re trying to do, but it’s difficult. People need a rallying point,” Steve glanced over at Tony just in time to see Tony’s eyes flick up and down Steve’s body, but in a way that made Steve feel like Tony was focusing on the uniform, not Steve himself.

Before Steve could respond, though, the inky blackness spread over Tony’s eyes again, just for a flicker, and then Tony grinned. “Dinner’s ready. Come on. Let’s go eat!”

Tony led the way to a large, warm colored room that was half dining room and half kitchen. The dining room contained mismatched tables pushed together with mismatched chairs and benches. The kitchen half - or at least Steve presumed it was a kitchen - had counters, a stove, a few other things he could identify, but also several things Steve couldn’t identify. There was a young girl with medium dark skin toddling around, being chased and entertained by a lean Asian man. Carrying food from the kitchen to the table were a tall, broad man with even darker skin than Jim had and a brown haired white woman. Jim and Thor came into the room, followed by a tall blonde woman and a woman who - Steve had to blink and make sure he wasn’t seeing things at this - had green skin and green hair.

“Where’s Sam?” Tony asked, catching up to the Asian man and the toddler and scooping up the toddler, tickling her belly and causing squeals of laughter.

“He’ll be along in a minute. He had to stop off at his quarters,” The green skinned woman said, going over to help carry food to the table. Everyone did, except for whoever was holding the baby at the time - because after Tony, Jim held her, and after Jim the blonde held her - and once all of their food was at the table they sat, Tony patting the chair next to him. By now there was another man in the room, who was also dark skinned, a bit broader than Jim but not nearly so much as the other man, and the baby had been passed along to the woman with brown hair.

“What do you want to eat, Cap?” Tony asked. Steve peered at the food. He could identify what some things were, if they were fruits or meat or grains, but none of it looked all that familiar.

“A little bit of everything, I guess,” he said after a moment and Tony nodded, making up a plate for him in a way that Steve supposed was typical for their meal, because everyone else seemed to be making their food in much the same way.

“Okay. Introductions,” Tony said once everyone had their food and they were digging in. The toddler was gnawing on something that Steve thought was probably a fruit, but seemed kind of tough. Tony pointed as he spoke. “You’ve already met Rhodey. Next to him is Carol Danvers, she’s one of our other pilots and they’re dating. Then we have Jen Walters, she’s the _Avenger_ ’s captain. Then we have Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Danny Rand. The three of them are in a relationship together, and Danielle is their baby. Jessica, Luke, and Danny are our … land muscle is probably a good way to word it. Most of us are pretty good fighters on land, but they’re the best and work very well together, even before they started their thing. Plus Danny’s got some connections with most of the local governments and more powerful merchants, so he can help us if we need anything when we’re planetside. Of course, you already met Thor, and then next to her we have Sam Wilson. He’s good at a little bit of everything. He’s a pilot, but he also helps out in the med bay - medical bay - when needed, as well as helping out with planetside negotiations because he’s really good with people. And that’s everybody.”

That was a lot of information to throw at Steve all at once, but he nodded, memorizing them and their skillsets. “Well, I’m sure you’re all aware, but I’m Steve Rogers. Captain America.”

“Yeah, we’re aware,” Danny said, amused.

“It’s been a really long time since you were around, but there’re still stories about you,” Luke also sounded a little amused, reaching over and handing Danielle some other kind of fruit or vegetable, which she started to gnaw on happily.

“Technically he was never Captain America, not after the change swept past him,” Tony pointed out. “He probably never really existed. He’s lucky he moved fast enough to press the button before that happened, or he wouldn’t be here.”

The level of detail Tony knew about what happened startled Steve, but he didn’t say anything about it, watching him curiously.

“Something must have protected the good Captain,” Thor said, her voice firm and commanding. “If not for some manner of protection or shielding, the wave of change would have struck him.”

“The Time Gem would have done it, and it would explain how Skull managed to get his time machine working in the first place. Did you happen to see a stone, oval sized, about two inches long and an inch wide at largest, and an inch long and a half an inch wide at smallest, a yellow or yellow orange color, anywhere near the time machine?” Jen asked, leaning forward.

“Guys,” Sam said, in a patient but long suffering tone, “This is his first day with us. How about we focus on giving him space and letting him get comfortable first, then we quiz him?”

“You’re just trying to reinstitute the ‘no work talk at the table’ rule again,” Tony accused, but he was grinning.

“You’re just mad that you’re the one who always breaks it first,” Jim arched his eyebrows a little, grinning wide.

“It’s not my fault that if we don’t talk about our job we don’t have anything else to talk about. I swear, last time we tried to institute that rule the silence was so awkward I was about to fling myself out an airlock,” Tony said, sighing dramatically.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Tony,” Carol chided. “If you just take a moment to put on your armor you can fling yourself out of all the airlocks you want.”

Tony laughed, sounding happy and pleased, and Steve felt a slight flush. He wasn’t even sure Tony liked men, and here he was, finding himself drawn to him. When Steve had been younger, being interested in other men hadn’t exactly been widely accepted, but it hadn’t been hated the way it had been as he’d gotten older. Now, it seemed, it was either fine or it was all right when taken in the context of a partnership with a woman. Which was something that Steve had never personally seen before, a relationship like that with three people in it.

“You know-” Tony started, but cut off abruptly, his eyes filming over with inky blackness. At the same time, an alarm sounded, making Danielle start to cry and cover her ears.

“What is that?” Steve asked as everyone got up. Jessica rocked the baby and hushed her gently.

“Skull’s raiders,” Tony reported, voice sounding dull and flat. “Six of them.”

“Damn. Carol, Tony, suit up. Rhodey, Sam, get in your Defenders. I’ll head to the nose and bring Cap with me so he can see what we’ve got going on,” Jen barked out her orders efficiently, then led Steve to the cockpit of the ship, which was a relatively spacious room with a lot of panels, buttons, and a wide, thick window in the front. She hit a few buttons quickly and some kind of image appeared on the window, showing six insidious looking airplane-like crafts. They were sleeker than anything Steve had ever seen, and had Skull’s emblem, changed over the years but still recognizable, painted on them.

Tony’s voice came from the walls around them, still speaking in that dispassionate tone. “Carol and I are ready to deploy.”

“We still need a few minutes,” Jim said quickly. There was some amount of urgency in his tone, and Steve glanced at Jen, who was glancing over everything and frowning.

“How quickly can those ships get here?” Steve asked, pointing at Skull’s ships, frowning a little. Jen looked at them, pressed a button or two, and a time popped up.

“Tony, Carol, go. Thor, join them. The raiders either got very close without detection or they’re in a ship with a more advanced engine than we’ve seen because they’re less than five minutes out,” Jen said.

“Fuck!” Jim swore, but didn’t disagree with her, and after a moment or two Steve saw what looked like two humans with suits of armor - one made of leather or something else relatively light, the other made of metal - fly out from the ship and head towards the rapidly enlarging pinpricks that were the six ships. After a few moments, Thor joined them, dressed no differently than she had been inside of the ship.

“How are they doing that?” Steve asked, watching, his eyes flicking between what he could actually see and the projection of the raider ships.

“Thor’s powers, which come from the hammer, allow her to fly in space unaided. Carol’s powers allow her to fly in space with an oxygen supply, and Extremis allows Tony to shield himself with his armor,” Jen explained quickly, and that didn’t really help, but Steve could get more of an explanation later.

He watched as the three people, looking so vulnerable, clashed with the ships. Clearly all three of them were used to this kind of warfare, because they took very good advantage of their three dimensional space and their smaller size, darting in and out of the range of the ships quickly. Thor swung her hammer and threw it, the hammer always coming back to her hand in a solid smack. Tony alternately hit things and shot some sort of beam of light out of his palms and chest. Carol also tended to hit things, and she had energy crackling around her fists as she did so.

“They look like they’re doing a good job,” Steve murmured quietly, watching the image - which was fixed, and made Steve think it was coming from a camera on the ship somewhere, but magnified like they were looking through a telescope - carefully.

“Yeah they are,” Jen agreed. “We still want you two out there, Rhodey, Sam!”

“We’re pulling out of the bay now,” Sam said, and Steve saw, a moment later, two other ships about the same size as the raiders fly towards where the fight was.

But before they got close enough to help, one of the damaged ships managed to fly around and behind to flank Tony, and Steve knew the moment before he saw it happen that it meant that Tony was in trouble.

It didn’t seem right that the flash of weapon fire was silent.

The next instant was not, Tony screaming in pain over the coms, body bucking and writhing on the projection, metal flying everywhere from where his armor had been torn open by the weapon. Jim screamed for Tony and Jen was barking orders.

“Thor! Grab him and get him back here, now! Rhodey - stay the fuck in the fight!” she ordered, her voice leaving no room for argument. Thor plucked Tony from where he was drifting, his body lax, and flew faster than any of them had so far back to the _Avenger_.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jim said, and it sounded like his teeth were gritted in determination. Steve saw one of the ships from the _Avenger_  fire its own weapons - this one was gunmetal grey, and seemed more heavily armed - destroying the raider that had fired on Tony.

Carol, Tony, and Thor had been careful before. They had been damaging but not destroying the enemy crafts. Maybe this had been down to the size difference. Maybe this was because they hadn’t wanted to kill them, until Tony had gotten hurt. Now Jim, Sam - whose ship was a bit smaller and less apparently heavily armed, with red paint - and Carol were ruthless. The battle was over in minutes, and then they were rushing back to the _Avenger_.

“Where’s the med bay from here? The fastest way?” Steve asked Jen once it was over. He knew how to get from there to the mess hall, and from the mess hall to the med bay, but not from the cockpit to the med bay.

“I’ll show you,” Jen said, typing quickly to close out the screens they’d been watching and turning to run out of the room. She was fast, but Steve was fast, too. When she noticed that, she picked up speed, then he did, until they were sprinting to the med bay.

When they skidded to a halt there, Thor was laying Tony down on one of the soft beds, his armor discarded in a corner. The clothes he’d been wearing were torn and bloody, open all the way across his back, and his back itself looked and smelled like cooked meat. Steve fought hard not to gag, and Jen covered her mouth and left the room.

“Good. You are here,” Thor said, her voice still carrying the imperial tone, but gentler now. “I will need your assistance,” she set the hammer down in the corner near Tony’s armor, and then took several deep breaths.

“What with?” Steve asked, impatiently, after a moment.

“A moment, please, Steve,” Thor’s voice changed in tone, pitch, cadence, everything halfway through the sentence. It was as if an entirely different woman was speaking. And, well, it was. Steve had been watching her, and as she’d spoken, sparks of electricity had crackled over her skin and clothes. The armor disappeared, leaving comfortable, loose clothes that hung off of a sickly thin frame. Her hair simply vanished, and once the helmet was gone as well, Steve saw that she was bald. She swayed and very nearly sank to her knees, but Steve was fast, darting to her side and supporting her.

“What do you need?” Steve asked, quietly, frowning and confused, but knowing she and Tony both needed help.

She smiled. “Steadying, for the moment. The change drains me,” she took a few more breaths, then pulled away from Steve, smiling wider and going over to a wall, pulling a cabinet from it and removing several pills and a small bottle of water. She took the pills and drank the water, then nodded to Tony. “I’ll need you to hold him down. Wash your hands first, and I’ll give you a pair of gloves to wear. Painkillers aren’t a good idea on him.”

Steve wasn’t fond of that idea, but painkillers didn’t work right on him after the serum, so he understood a little. Maybe they didn’t work on Tony, either. He went over to the sink in the room and washed his hands, then turned back to Thor to see her fiddling around with another drawer. She brought out gloves - as well as quite a few other things, which she placed on a tray near Tony - handing a pair to Steve and then washing her own hands, putting them on.

Jim came in then, looking worried, his face hardening at Tony’s back. “Damn it, Tony,” he hissed, then looked at Steve and Thor, “Jane, do you need anything?”

“Jane?” Steve asked, glancing at Thor.

“Jane is my name when I’m not Thor. Dr. Jane Foster. It’s good to meet you, Steve,” Jane smiled up at him, then said to Jim, “Get Sam in here to play nurse. You are forbidden from it. Last time Tony got hurt and I let you act as nurse, you nearly stabbed me.”

Jim frowned, but went over to a small panel on the wall, pressing a button and saying, “Sam, get your ass up here, Jane wants your help,” once he was done, he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, looking determined to watch over the procedure.

Jane sighed, then rolled her eyes. Sam arrived shortly, and once he was there and had washed his hands, they got to work. Steve put one hand at the base of Tony’s neck, where it met his shoulders, and the other at his waist, holding him down, while Jane and Sam set about cleaning his wounds and removing dead tissue.

A few minutes in, Tony groaned and started to stir, and Jim was beside the bed an instant later. “Tones? Hey, Tony, you remember what happened, right? The raiders and you getting hit in the back.”

Tony groaned, then nodded. “Yeah. Luke holding me?”

“Nope. That’s the new guy,” Jim said, glancing up at Steve.

“Hm. Thought it was too gentle for Luke,” Tony murmured, sounding relaxed even as Steve could feel his muscles tense and start to buck under Steve’s hands as Tony registered the pain.

“It’s not gonna be long, okay? They just need to get you cleaned and everything, then they can let you heal on your own,” Jim soothed, reaching up and running a hand through Tony’s hair.

“Fuck. Don’t even need to do this much. Not with Extremis’ healing factor,” Tony said, then let out a cry as Jane and Sam were less than gentle in their motions.

“Yes, we do,” Jane said quietly, gently. “We need to make sure you heal correctly. We don’t know what kind of horrible things the Skull might have put in his weapons.”

Tony groaned, pressing his face into his pillow and nodding. Steve glanced at Jim just in time to see a helpless look pass over his face, before he continued soothing Tony as best he could.

* * *

 

When it was all over, Tony slept again. Jane left to go rest, too, her hammer and the armor both piled up in the corner. Steve found himself going over to it, picking up a charred piece of armor and turning it over in his hands.

“He doesn’t like people he’s not comfortable with touching that. It’s part of him,” Jim said, from where he still sat next to Tony.

“Oh. Sorry,” Steve set it down gingerly and stepped away. “It’s very well crafted.”

“It is, but I mean it’s literally part of him. I don’t understand all of it that much - and I am an intelligent, well educated man - but somehow he stores the armor in his bones. When he hasn’t been blasted half to death by Hydra raiders, at least. And he can talk to the ship - to all technology - telepathically. Or technopathically, is probably the better term,” Jim explained.

Steve’s eyebrows arched a little, but he nodded. He sat in another chair and sighed. “There’s so much I don’t understand about this place. And I know I woke up hours ago, but it feels like days, now.”

“Well, I can help you understand a few things. Maybe better than Tony, depending on what it is. I love him and all, but he can be shit with people sometimes. He tends to treat them a bit too much like he does machines. Not in a bad way, just … he’s a control freak. He can control machines, knows what to do to fix them, to make them happy, knows how to find out what’s wrong in the first place. With people, he doesn’t always get it,” Jim said, smiling fondly, “But damned if he doesn’t try.”

“Are you and he and Carol like Jessica and Luke and Danny?” Steve asked abruptly. Maybe this was the new fashion.

Jim looked startled, then laughed and shook his head. “No. Carol and I are just the two of us, and we’re very happy that way. Tony is my best friend in the world. I love him like a brother.”

Steve nodded, paused, and tried to figure out how to word this. “Is Jane okay?”

“She’s sick. Very sick. She has cancer, and the kind she has, there’s actually a cure for now, but she won’t stop using Mjolnir long enough to take the damn cure. Every time she changes to Thor and back, the effects have been negated. We all have a bit of a hero complex, I guess, but she’s especially bad. A doctor with the powers of an Asgardian goddess,” Jim explained, sounding frustrated.

“Is she really a goddess?” Steve asked, curiously.

“Yes, she is. She doesn’t really talk about it, but apparently her powers are tied to the hammer, and they are the power of a god. Or a goddess,” Jim said.

Steve nodded, and watched Tony for a moment, then said, “I think soon I might have more questions, but for now that’s all I have. So much is different and so much is the same.”

“You sound overwhelmed. Understandable, given the circumstances,” Jim said.

“It is,” Steve said, then after a moment said, “If you want to go be with Carol, I’ll watch over Tony. We don’t both have to be here.”

Jim thought about that a moment, then stood. “I want to know the minute he’s awake. I know you won’t know how to do it, but he can get in touch with me.”

“I’ll make sure you’re told,” Steve nodded, and watched as Jim left, probably to go to bed.

* * *

 

It took about another hour or so, by Steve’s internal clock, for Tony to wake. He hissed when he woke, seeming a little in pain, but not too much. He glanced around and gave Steve a small smile. “Hey. Did you manage to get Rhodey to go to bed? Good job.”

“Yes, I did, but he insisted on being called when you wake up. He said I wouldn’t know how to do it, but you would,” Steve said, nodding.

The inky blackness spread over Tony’s eyes and once it was gone, he said, “Okay, I let him know. And Jane, as well. She said if I can move around without too much pain, I can head back to my quarters, and show you yours.”

“Are you sure? I saw your back when you first came in. It looked like charred meat,” Steve said, frowning worriedly.

“Yeah. I have a healing factor thanks to Extremis,” at the blank look Steve gave him, he clarified, “I heal faster than the average person.”

Steve nodded, and Tony pushed himself up and off the bed, wincing a little but mostly getting up off the bed without any problems. He glanced at the armor in the corner but ultimately left it there, and started to lead Steve off in one direction, then down an elevator, and down another corridor.

“You ought to sleep for now, then tomorrow I can show you around the ship properly, help you get to know it,” Tony said, yawning a little himself. “You can start helping out, too, and we’ll get you some other clothes.”

Steve glanced down at his uniform and nodded. He hadn’t even thought of that. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“I’ll put your room right near mine. That way if you need anything, you can just come ask,” Tony added, and after another few steps he stopped at a door, gesturing. “This is you.”

Opening the door, Steve went in. The room was rather utilitarian, but it seemed cozy. It was better than the tent he’d slept in the last time he’d slept. The thought made him pause a moment and think. Had that really been the last time he’d slept? Of course he’d been unconscious in the med bay, but the last time he’d laid down and gone to sleep had been, technically, hundreds of years ago. He shook his head out a little and focused on the room in front of him. There was a bed and a dresser, but that was it. Steve laid the shield along one wall, going over and sitting on the bed. It was very comfortable, and the quilt on the bed seemed nice and warm. There was another door, and looking inside, he saw that it was a small bathroom. After he looked around, he looked up and asked, “Which room is yours?”

“This one, to the left of yours,” Tony said, pointing from where he stood outside in the hall. “If I haven’t come to get you in the morning, come get me when you wake up. We’ll go to breakfast together and then I can show you around.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, smiling. They stood there, looking at each other awkwardly, for a moment, then Tony turned to go into his own room and Steve closed his door, stripping down and going to bed.

* * *

 

The next morning, Steve was up before Tony, though Tony was easy to wake, just requiring a knock at the door and he was up. They went down to the mess hall, eating breakfast with the others. Jane was still Jane, and Jim was fretting over Tony, making sure he got lots of protein with his breakfast to facilitate his healing factor. Tony did seem to be eating more than he did the night before, and he was moving easier than he had after he’d gotten out of the med bay, so that seemed to be a good sign.

After they ate, Tony took Steve on a tour of the ship. They had several public spaces that included the mess hall, a sort of living room that had several interesting games and other entertainment options that Steve would explore later, he was sure. There was a library - oddly full of lots of small screens and what Tony called computers, as well as a few real, paper books - and a gymnasium, and then they got to the very interesting spaces.

Next to the gym was a training room. “We use this room for anything that might otherwise puncture the hull of the ship. Guns, powers, repulsor blasts, Luke’s fists. Your shield, if you want to practice with it in here. The walls are padded, and lined with adamantium, so it’s impossible to break through them,” Tony explained as they ducked in there. “I also have training targets we use,” they moved on quickly from that room, because for the moment it was relatively empty, both of people and of things to do there.

In about the middle of the ship was a farm, with artificial lighting.

“We get a lot of our food when we stop off and trade with planets, but we also grow our own. This is where,” Tony explained. There was a sharp cry and a hawk circled overhead. Steve looked at it, eyes wide, then at Tony, who laughed. “That’s Sam’s pet. His name is Redwing.”

“Sam has a pet hawk. Okay,” Steve said. The people on this ship were very strange. Nice, but very strange.

“Come on. Now you get to see the engine room,” Tony said, practically bouncing. Steve wasn’t sure why Tony was so excited until he realized that Tony was the engineer and the mechanic, and as such the engine room was his area of expertise. He smiled and followed Tony, ending up in the rear of the ship, in a room that was brightly lit thanks to a device in the middle.

“What is that?” Steve asked, looking at it with awe. It was beautiful, but he had no idea what it was. The engine, presumably?

“It’s a reactor. It powers the ship. I have smaller backups in small areas through the ship that will power the ship in case this one goes down, but this is the primary one,” Tony said.

“It’s beautiful,” Steve said, looking up at Tony with a smile. He glanced around the room to see all kinds of other things scattered around, many of it looking like half finished projects.

Tony followed his gaze and said, “I tinker a little in my free time. Sometimes I upgrade weapons, sometimes I make other things that are useful for us around the ship.”

“That’s fascinating,” Steve said, going over and looking at the things Tony made. He had absolutely no idea what any of it was, but it all looked very clever.

“You don’t know what any of it is, do you?” Tony asked, giving him a little smile.

“No, I don’t. But give me time. I can learn,” Steve shrugged. He had adapted to all kinds of strange technology after joining the army, both the experimental technology that the Allies had come up with and the technology that he’d seen from their enemies. He knew he could adapt to this, especially with such a friendly guide.

“I know,” Tony smiled and nodded. “Come on. Next on our list is the hold. Where we have the cargo. You can pick up some clothes and things there. We have plenty of extra supplies.”

They headed to another room in the back, this one full of large crates. Tony went over and opened one up, pulling out some rather shapeless cloth. “We use adaptive nanotubes woven together, and you can use one of our computers to program it to be any shape or size or color you want,” Tony dug into another crate and came up with a small handheld device that he was able to resize by tugging on the corners. “This is a personal computer. It also contains a communications device, so we’ll get it programmed to be able to contact the rest of us. Let me show you how to program your clothes. You can also change how your room looks, to a point.”

Tony pressed a corner of the computer to the cloth and words came up on the screen, asking if they wanted to customize the cloth. Tony clicked yes, then went through the other questions as they came up, including pointing it at Steve once to get Steve’s measurements, and eventually the cloth resolved itself into tan colored pants and a blue shirt.

“That was amazing!” Steve said, turning the cloth over in his hands. It had an odd texture, but Steve would get used to it if it was so versatile.

“It is. We still use organic materials sometimes, like silk, cotton, leather, things like that, but most often that’s for rich people or special occasions. Since organics can’t adapt, they’re very expensive. This is cheap now.”

Steve tried it next, making another pair of pants and a shirt out of the cloth, and then he made a whole pile of underwear and socks. Tony also found him a good pair of shoes that fit well, and he took all of that and some more of the cloth back to his room. Then Tony showed him around a little bit more, making sure he saw everything.

* * *

 

For the next several days, they had Steve doing little things around the ship to help out. Lifting things or moving them occasionally, and usually just doing what needed to be done around the _Avenger_. He was learning how to cook with these strange new foods from the others and often helped out at meal time. In his free time he tended to chat with Tony, talking about everything but primarily about how things had changed in the many years he’d been gone.

“A little bit before dinner tonight we’ll be landing on a planet called зима. We’ll be meeting with someone that we want to talk to you,” Tony said nearly a week after Steve arrived.

“Who is it?” Steve asked, curiously.

“The closest thing we have to a leader of the rebellion. We call him the Soldier,” Tony said, and he sounded oddly amused. “But we’ve agreed that we aren’t going to give you any more detail until we get there. For security reasons. I want to tell you, but we agreed,”

Steve nodded, and they kept doing what they were doing. Tony was doing maintenance on the engine, and Steve was helping out, doing whatever needed to be done. Mostly that meant handing Tony tools and holding heavy things. “What’s this planet like?” Steve asked after a while.

“Cold. We’ll need to make sure you have some very warm clothes before we go down there,” Tony said, grinning a little, looking up and down Steve’s body. Those looks were becoming more and more common. Steve was pretty sure that it meant that Tony was interested in him, but he wasn’t sure he was comfortable making that assumption. Homosexuality seemed accepted now - or at least to the point that the rebels practiced it, even if it wasn’t widely accepted. So it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that Tony was flirting with him.

“Do you still use the adaptive cloth to make clothes of different warmths?” Steve asked.

“Yes, but usually we have to use many layers, or more than one piece of cloth,” Tony nodded.

They did end up using two full pieces of the adaptive cloth to make Steve’s heavy jacket, and they also made him some other heavy clothes to take with him on the planet. By the time they were done with that it was about time to land and they strapped themselves in wherever they could. Everything in the ship had to be easy to stow away or be easily securable, so that when they landed or broke atmosphere they wouldn’t get injured by it. The seats with the straps were placed at assorted places through the ship, so that they could get to them wherever they were at when they needed them. Steve and Tony strapped down in the engine room, Tony keeping a keen eye on everything as they landed. He was both making sure that the engine was performing properly and making sure that they’d stowed everything away securely.

They landed without much fuss, and it didn’t seem to Steve like it was that cold there. When he said as much, Tony laughed a bit. “That’s because it’s heated in there. When we get the doors opened, it’ll be freezing.”

“All right. I’ll get bundled up,” Steve said, and they both went off to dress in their nice warm clothes.

They met up with the others near the cargo bay door a short while later, Tony the last to arrive and looking somewhat nervous. Steve frowned a little at that, watching Tony, the way he was drumming his fingers against his leg and tapping his foot and glancing around.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked.

Jim laughed, slighting an arm around Tony’s shoulders and giving him a little shake. “Tony hates the ground. He’s a starbaby.”

“What’s that?” Steve asked, glancing between them.

“I was born on a spaceship. So were my parents. And their parents. And their parents. And so on,” Tony explained, “For many generations. I was raised on a spaceship. I didn't set foot on the ground until I was 21 and had just joined the rebellion.”

That astounded Steve. The idea of anyone not setting foot on ground until they were 21 was just incomprehensible. And then he realized, “If your family had been … starbabies? … for generations, then does that mean you had generations of your family that lived and died on the ship, without ever having set foot on ground?”

“Yeah. It’s not common, but it was for my family, for the other people on the _Resilient_ ,” Tony nodded. “Sometimes we’d go years without even docking with another ship.”

“Escapists, the lot of them,” Luke said, shaking his head. He held Danielle, who was starting to squirm and whine a little, very warmly bundled and probably starting to overheat.

“Escapists?” Steve asked.

“People who run away from Skull’s rule. Who find a place to hide out or a way to just keep running,” Jen said, “Which a lot of people find cowardly. They won’t stand and fight. But some of the younger generations on those ships just don’t know what’s going on. Tony had no idea until he was told.”

Steve nodded, and Danny went over to the cargo bay door, typing a sequence into a keypad. The door slid open and a ramp slid down. Cold air hit them at once, and Steve understood what Tony meant about how cold it was. He crossed his arms over his chest and rubbed a little, warming himself. Standing outside, next to a vehicle that was more than large enough to carry them all, was a young woman with bright red hair.

“Steve Rogers, meet Natasha Romanoff. She’s very close with the Soldier,” Tony said, a smirk playing on his lips, as he walked down to the vehicle. It looked a little like a tank, but it wasn’t touching the bright white snow that coated the ground.

“I’m his second in command here on зима,” Natasha clarified.

“And you’re sleeping together,” Tony said, voice sort of sing song. Steve realized after a moment that Tony was teasing her.

“Well, the nights here are very long and very cold,” Natasha smiled a little, “And James is quite warm.”

So his name was James. That was good to know. He wasn’t sure why they all insisted on using a code name anyway. Maybe it had to do with the Soldier being something of a leader, and not identifying him. But if everyone in the rebellion knew who he was anyway, what was the point of the code name?

They all piled into the vehicle and Natasha drove it some distance to a base set into a cave. It was a little warmer there, and they unfastened their heavy coats, though they kept them on. Natasha escorted them to guest quarters, showing them where they would stay for the next few days before taking Steve, Tony, and Jen to see the Soldier.

The Soldier was in some kind of a war room, looking over star charts with several other people. He was wearing a black shirt with a high neck and dark slacks. His left arm was bare, but it wasn’t really his arm anymore. Where his arm had been was now a shiny silver colored metal that Steve couldn’t identify, in the shape of an arm. He looked up and smiled a little when he saw them, and that was when Steve realized who he was. It had taken a moment because he looked older than when Steve had last seen him, and Steve was not expecting it at all.

“Bucky?!” Steve said, his eyes wide.

“I don’t really go by that any more,” Bucky said, shrugging a little. “Most everyone here knows me by James Barnes or just the Soldier.”

“How are you here?” Steve went over and pulled Bucky into a tight, brief hug, looking over him when he pulled away.

“The same way you are. Skull’s time travel room,” Bucky said. “I landed 14 years ago, though. Based on what I remember and discussion with the scientists, it seemed like the room was still recalibrating when we went over to the control panel, which is probably what threw us to different places in the timestream. Same general time, but different specifics.”

Steve glanced around to Jen and Tony, frowning. After a moment he said, “Were you verifying my story?”

“Remember how we knew who you were? Barnes is how. When he first came forward the rebellion had no idea what was going on. They talked with him and eventually someone asked him what year he thought it was and figured it out from there,” Tony explained. “So when you appeared on our ship, I remembered the story and we contacted him. He said to tell you what had happened, but not to give you details about him and bring you here immediately.”

“It didn’t make sense that anyone else would just appear like that, but we had to make sure,” Bucky added. “Before we got you involved in anything too deeply.”

That made a certain amount of sense, though Steve was a little hurt that they hadn’t trusted him right off. He nodded, and Bucky smiled at him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tony smile a little, too, and look relieved. “So what’s the plan?” Steve asked, glancing around.

“Psychological warfare, for now,” Jen said, grinning a little bit.

“The Skull remembered me. Not well, but he did remember me. Mostly because he remembered you. He’s scared of you. In our timeline, you led the charge against Hydra. Against Skull and everyone working with him. The idea of you being back terrifies him. So we’re going to have you run missions with the _Avenger_  while at the same time spreading around information about you. Saying you’re back and saying that you’re the only one that has ever defeated him, things like that. Making you legendary,” Bucky explained.

“If we do it right, hopefully we can not only destabilize his power base but also recruit more people into the rebellion while we’re at it,” Tony added.

“That sounds like a good plan. But I don’t want to be the only one we’re making into a rallying point,” Steve said, glancing at the others.

“Who else do you suggest, then?” Jen asked, frowning a little, but she also sounded open to suggestions.

“Make everyone I work with - the whole team I’m leading - into a rallying point. Give them all that legendary status,” Steve said, “Like with the Howling Commandos and the Invaders. Bucky was young when he joined, and he inspired a lot of kids to help out with the war effort, collecting scrap and doing what they could. People are inspired most when they see people like them or hear about people like them doing amazing things.”

“So we talk about you leading everyone, and we inspire as many people as possible,” Tony said, nodding slowly, “We talk about how scared the Skull is of you, talk a lot about that, but we also make sure to highlight everyone.”

“We can do that, yeah. It sounds like a good plan,” Jen nodded.

“Good. Where are we going first?” Steve asked Bucky.

“Wakanda. One of our contacts there has access to a large supply of a metal called vibranium - the same thing your shield is made of - and we need to trade for it,” he said, pulling a computer out of his pocket and enlarging it, showing a cargo manifest to Tony. “We’ll be trading them for a few minerals I know they need in large supply for the tech they use to refine the vibranium. Start off bartering for about half of what I’m sending with you, for refined, and then negotiate with T’Challa from there.”

“Got it,” Tony said, his eyes going inky black for a moment, then the computer in Steve’s pocket chirped at him. Steve pulled it out, and it had the cargo manifest on it. He frowned a little, but didn’t ask.

“I’m going to catch up with Steve. Jen, make sure the ship gets loaded,” Bucky said. Jen nodded and headed out, and Tony left as well. They headed in two different directions, though, so Steve wasn’t sure what Tony was doing.

* * *

 

Several hours later, Steve met the rest of the crew back at the transport to take them back to the _Avenger_. He’d had a good time catching up with Bucky, but it was time for them to go. A small group had gathered to see them off, a few men and women who were chatting with the crew of the _Avenger._  What really drew Steve’s eye, though, was the older man that Tony was talking to. They were off by themselves, talking quietly. Tony had a look on his face that Steve had never seen there, one of sheer affectionate joy, like his whole world lit up when this man spoke to him. When Tony saw Steve watching him, he waved him over.

“Hi. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Steve said, but the old man shook his head.

“Not at all. I actually wanted to chat with you. I’m Edwin Jarvis,” the man held his hand out, giving Steve a smile.

“Steve Rogers. Captain America. Good to meet you, sir,” Steve said, shaking his hand.

“Yes, we mostly all know who you are,” Edwin said, nodding. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Jarvis is the man who got me into this,” Tony said, smiling wide. “He came on to the _Resilient_  and worked there for years, waiting for someone who was the right temperament to listen to what he was saying about Skull. Most everyone on the _Resilient_  just wanted away from the problems of the outside universe, but he was looking for people who wanted to help.”

“The only one who would listen was Tony. But fortunately one of Tony Stark is worth more than everyone on that ship combined,” Edwin said, looking over at Tony with subtle pride in his eyes.

Tony gave him an embarrassed look, and ducked away when Jim called him over to look at the boxes they were loading onto the transport to take over to the Avenger. Edwin watched him go, then turned to look at Steve. “He’s a good man, Captain, and he seems to admire you. He was quite excited when he told me about your trip here, how quickly you’ve been adapting, and the time you two have been spending together.”

“Really?” Steve asked, looking over to watch Tony, who now had his jet boots on and was hovering over the cargo, inspecting it from all sides.

“Yes,” Edwin said, nodding. “He’s very fond of you, Captain. And, honestly, I see him as something of a son. I’m quite invested in his future.”

Steve turned back to Edwin, watching him for a moment. “Are you trying to tell me that Tony might be interested in pursuing a relationship with me, if I asked him about it?”

Edwin gave a little shrug, but his eyes gleamed.

“Why are you telling me this? Wouldn’t it be better for me to figure it out myself?” Steve asked.

“Given the way you were looking at him just now, I wasn’t sure if you would take action yourself,” Edwin said.

“Well, maybe not. I’m not used to recognizing flirting,” Steve admitted.

“He wouldn’t mind it at all if you wanted to pursue something romantic with him, trust me. He’s been flirting with you,” Edwin said.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Steve nodded, and when Tony came back over, chattering about how the cargo was delicate, he smiled and responded, fascinated, keeping Edwin’s advice in the back of his mind the whole time.

* * *

 

There were, of course, a few problems with actually going through with talking to Tony about starting something romantic. The talk with Edwin had made Steve reasonably certain that Tony would be interested in pursuing a relationship with Steve, but what if Tony was just flirting with Steve because he was nearby? Though that didn’t explain why he’d gone out of his way to tell Edwin - who sounded essentially like Tony’s father figure - about Steve. So Tony was probably just as interested as Steve himself was. Steve had briefly worried that he wasn’t really interested in Tony, that he’d essentially just imprinted on him like a duckling, but Steve only felt this way towards Tony. Yes, it was fast to feel so affectionate, but they were essentially at war with Skull, and that sort of situation created unique bonds.

That was what really worried Steve, though. They were essentially at war with Red Skull. Was it appropriate to start a relationship in the middle of a rebellion against an evil dictator? But on the other hand, they had no idea if either of them were going to survive this at all, and even if they did they might not defeat Skull. So to say that they shouldn’t be together until Skull was defeated was limiting and allowed Skull to rule them in far too many ways. And even if they did defeat Skull, what if it was at the cost of Steve’s life, or Tony’s? Steve hated to think that way, but it was practical. No, they needed to live for the day, realize their time might be limited, and talk soon.

So the next time they were working in the engine room together, Steve hesitated and then asked, “I know that the rebels are all right with relationships like the one Luke and Danny and Jessica have, but I remember what Skull was like in my day. What they have can’t be approved of by his dictatorship.”

“Fuck, what Rhodey and Carol have isn’t approved of by Red Skull,” Tony said, shaking his head. “But for the most part the rebellion doesn’t care what people do. Men together, women together, interracial relationships, polyamory, interracial polyamorous relationships - we really don’t care what you have going on as long as all the parties are consenting. Hell, nobody cares if we want to get together with aliens, as long as it’s all consenting.”

Steve watched Tony as Tony spoke, interested in his body language. He was loose and comfortable. Maybe Edwin was right. Edwin was probably right. After all, he knew Tony longer than anyone here, according to Tony himself, and probably knew him better. So after a long few moments, he asked, “What about you?”

“What am I interested in, you mean?” Tony asked, and Steve nodded. Tony continued, pausing a moment. “I’ve had relationships with people of multiple genders. I like calling myself bisexual - I’m attracted to my same gender and other genders, but at a different level of attraction. I’ve also heard pansexual used to describe being attracted to all genders, but I associate that with a uniform level of attraction, and my attraction isn’t that uniform. Different people define those terms in different ways, though - those are just my personal definitions,” Steve had already had a discussion with Jane about genders, when they were getting close to landing on зима the first time. Not only were there people in the rebellion who were didn’t fit into the gender binary that Steve had been raised with, but some of the alien races that still existed in the galaxy had upwards of seven chromosomes and many more gender hormones than humans did, which meant far more genders than humans had. It had been an interesting, enlightening talk.

“So if you are interested in men, would you be interested in me?” Steve asked, curiously.

“What?” Tony asked, looking shocked. “I mean, yeah, of course. Have you met you? But you like men?”

“I was raised in the 1920’s in America. People were all right with just about everything,” Steve shrugged. “I actually grew up with a crush on an actor that everyone knew was gay. Later, though, when people got more conservative, he got blackballed out of Hollywood.”

“Oh,” Tony said, then grinned wide. “So you’re interested in me and I’m interested in you, right?”

“Yep.” Steve said, popping the p and leaning towards Tony a little.

“Give me just one second.” Tony said. He ducked his head back into the engine, fiddled with something, then came back out. “Okay! That’ll do for a while.”

“Good. Come back to my room with me,” Steve said, standing from where he was sitting and taking Tony’s hand. He pulled him to his feet and kissed him affectionately, their lips pressing together, only briefly but still long enough to send a flare of heat into Steve’s gut. They headed back to Steve’s room and Steve, running off of inexperience and instinct, closed the door and pressed Tony to the shut door, kissing him again and bracketing him with his arms.

“How much experience do you have?” Tony asked when they broke for air, his breath coming in hot little bursts against Steve’s lips. They were nearly the same height, maybe an inch of difference between them. Still, the minor height difference meant that Tony had to glance ever so slightly upwards to meet Steve’s eyes, and Steve liked that.

“Not much. Does it matter?” Steve asked, curiously, leaning down to bury his face in Tony’s neck. He kissed and licked and sucked, giving a pleased little hum at the sweaty, salty, metallic taste of Tony’s skin.

“Nope. Just wondering who to thank,” Tony said, then made a whining noise, clinging to Steve as Steve nipped at him.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t like,” Steve said. He paused and added, straightening, “I might not be ready for actual sex. But I like this. I like this a lot.”

“That’s okay,” Tony said, nodding. “This is good. This is really good. Stop when you’re fine with stopping, but if you want more, let me know.”

Steve nodded, and leaned down to keep kissing Tony, sliding a leg between Tony’s legs. Tony let out a long moan, kissing back and arching up into Steve’s arms again.

By the time they were done kissing and fondling each other like teenagers, it was nearly dinner time, and Steve only pulled back because he was one of the ones who had to go help with dinner that night.

“If you stay in here, I think I’m set for dinner. I’ll just continue to devour you. So there, that’s you helping out,” Tony teased, even as he let Steve go and watched him head over to the small ensuite bathroom to wash his hands and face quickly. Tony didn’t bother. Steve looked at himself in the mirror as he did so, making sure to scrub the grease off his skin where he’d rubbed against the dark, almost ever-present grease stains and oil that covered Tony’s body. There wasn’t much he could do about the beard burn, except wait for it to go away. He did straighten up his hair, making sure he was nice and tidy before he went back out.

When he looked at Tony, he almost took him up on his earlier offer. Tony looked debauched, like they’d been doing more than just kissing before. His hair was tousled, there were hickies across his neck and his clothes were disordered. It was a delicious, tempting look on Tony, and it made Steve really want to stay in his room and debauch Tony a little bit more.

But it would do them both good to eat real food, and afterwards they could do this more. That would work.

“Come on, Tony,” Steve said once he was presentable again. Tony grinned and nodded, and Steve asked, “Why are you not cleaning up?”

“I want everyone to know that you’ve decided to bed me,” Tony said, grinning and sounding eager, and Steve could feel his face heat a little. Embarrassing Steve was probably intentional on Tony’s part, though, so he decided to tease back.

“Well, we didn’t actually bed each other, but you certainly look like we did,” Steve said, smiling a little.

“You look proud of yourself,” Tony said, his tone teasingly accusatory. “You should be. I feel like I’ve been more thoroughly undone than I normally do after sex, and we didn’t even have sex,” After a moment he reached out and slid his arm through Steve’s and grinned, giving Steve a little nudge.

They were the first to arrive in the kitchen, and Steve started to cook while Tony mostly just fetched and carried for him. He had absolutely no skill with cooking so he wasn’t allowed to touch anything that was on the stove or in the oven. But he was meticulous with measurements or cutting, so he got to do that while Steve did the actual cooking.

The others filtered in one after another. Jim paused when he saw Tony, looking from Tony to Steve, his eyes slightly narrow. Tony grinned at him and gave him a little wave. After a long moment Jim seemed to settle on a reaction, coming over and wrapping an arm around Tony’s shoulders and giving him a little shake. “Good for you, man,” He pointed at Steve. “You, though. You break his heart and there will be pain.”

“Understood,” Steve nodded. He had no plans to hurt Tony any time soon, and in fact hoped that they would be together for a very long time.

* * *

 

It took them two weeks to get to Wakanda. Tony and Steve spent most of their free time together, and while they hadn’t really progressed to having sex yet, they weren’t far off from it. They shared quite a few quiet intimacies with each other, including falling asleep in each other’s arms at the end of long, hard days.

“So what’s Wakanda like?” Steve asked as they began their approach to the planet.

“Hands down, it’s the technological gem of the human universe, though Red Skull doesn’t believe it. He seems to think wherever he lives is,” Tony rolled his eyes a bit and continued, making sure that everything was secured so that when they landed nothing would get too jostled. “The climate is a lot more varied than on зима. However, the area we’re going to is near the equator, and this time of year it’s pretty warm. So we need to dress light. I know you have the right kind of thing in your dresser - I made sure of it. And it looks like your Captain America uniform, so you can go spread some stories while we’re on the planet.”

“What about you? What are you going to wear?” Steve asked. Tony looked good in just about everything he wore, and if they needed to dress light, he was looking forward to seeing some exposed skin. Maybe his arms at the very least.

“The armor,” Tony said, shrugging, “I look more imposing in it than anything, and since we’re doing negotiating I’ll need to look imposing.”

“Is your armor going to be cool enough?” Steve asked, frowning. He couldn’t find fault in the logic, though he was disappointed he wouldn’t see any bare skin or anything.

“Of course,” Tony nodded. “There’s a climate control system in it. It keeps me warm in cold weather and cool in warm weather. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, good,” Steve said. He stood from where he was sitting and kissed Tony’s cheek, then nodded towards the seats. “Come on. You’ve checked over everything here and in both our rooms. Sit and get comfortable for the approach,” Tony still seemed nervous, though, and Steve assumed it was because they were landing on another planet, since he was so uncomfortable with that.

They both sat and strapped themselves in and got ready to land. Steve reached over and took Tony’s hand, and Tony smiled at him, saying quietly, “I hate being on land. I can’t feel the ship vibrate under my feet, can’t feel it with Extremis if we get too far away. I guess that’s a little silly, but it makes me nervous. But Wakanda is gorgeous, and at least it’s not a frozen wasteland like зима. They have seasons here, most everywhere except the equator, which is where we’re going.”

“You don’t have to come. I’m sure someone else can negotiate for the vibranium,” Steve said after a moment, though he wasn’t sure anyone else could. Tony seemed to be the expert on things like that.

“I know the value of those kinds of things best. I’m going to be the best to do the negotiating. Besides, T’Challa loves arguing with me,” Tony grinned, mischief in his eyes.

“And he is …? A local merchant or a mayor or …?” Steve asked, probingly.

“King of Wakanda, actually,” Tony corrected, “From my understanding, Skull usually leaves the local rulers in place, so long as they submit to Skull’s rule overall. T’Challa’s forefathers have been claiming to follow along with Skull’s rule while working with us to subvert him for generations. They’re more subtle about their alliance with the rebels, though, because T’Challa wants to maintain control of the planet legally.”

Before they could talk further, the ship shuddered violently in a way that indicated they entered atmosphere, and they focused on what they would need to do when they landed.

* * *

 

When they landed on Wakanda there was a man wearing an all black, very nearly skin tight suit there to greet them. Jane had picked up Mjolnir and become Thor, and she led the way out of the _Avenger_ , smiling at the man.

“T’Challa. It is very good to see you again, my friend,” She said, Mjolnir tied at her waist, reaching out both arms to hug him.

“Good to see you, too, Thor,” T’Challa said, hugging back and then turning to the others. They were all there, except Jim and Carol, who had stayed behind to babysit the ship and Danielle, who had been fussy enough the past day or so they didn’t want to bring her planetside. “And it is good to see you, too.”

“Nice to meet you, sir. I’m Steve Rogers,” Steve said, reaching out a hand to shake.

“Good to meet you,” T’Challa said, shaking his hand, and Steve noticed he had fake claws on both hands. They were well crafted, and appeared to be made of vibranium. T’Challa paused, seeming to consider his words before asking, “So, what brings the rebellion’s finest ship to our humble planet?”

“What, we can’t have come to just say hello?” Tony asked, grinning.

“No. You always have a second purpose,” T’Challa said, head turning so that he was likely eyeing Tony. Steve couldn’t tell for sure because he couldn’t see T’Challa’s eyes, but he had a feeling that it was likely.

“All right, all right. Barnes wants us to trade for Vibranium,” Tony said. “And I wouldn’t mind it if we had Steve wander around for a while in all his Captain America glory, spreading stories about how Red Skull is scared of Captain America and his crewmates.”

The corners of T’Challa’s mask, near his mouth, crinkled, and Steve could hear the amusement in his voice. “Really? Well, that is interesting. Of course you may go spread your Captain America propaganda. And you and I, Stark, will go debate how badly you and Barnes will be rip me off.”

Tony laughed, and nodded. To Steve, he said, “You go with Sam, Danny, Jess, and Luke. Jen, Thor, and I will go talk to T’Challa.”

To go negotiate with the king of Wakanda, Tony was going to take the captain of their ship and a goddess. Their political powerhouses. It was a good move, even if T’Challa saw through it, as he undoubtedly would. After all, he was a king, and while it was clever, it wasn’t subtle.

“We’ll be back later,” Steve said, reaching out and gently touching the back of Tony’s hand, and Tony nodded.

“You should be back for dinner,” T’Challa said, looking between them. It occurred to Steve that because of the mask, if T’Challa held still and only looked between them with his eyes, they would never know where he was looking. His body language was clearly very intentional, then. “I’ll throw you a dinner in your honor.”

“I’ll contact them when it’s about time,” Tony said, nodding.

They split up, Sam getting in the driver’s seat of their transport, Redwing with them and flying along beside them as they rode to the nearest city. Tony, Jen, Thor, and T’Challa had gone in a different direction. When he saw Steve’s worried glance in the direction that they’d headed, Luke said, “They’re going to Central Wakanda, which is the capital. It’s just a little further than N'Jadaka, which is where we’re headed. Just in a different direction.”

Steve nodded, and settled back down. He was still slightly worried at being so far separated from Tony and the others, but it couldn’t be helped.

The city that they arrived at was large and beautiful. It was bigger than any city that Steve had ever been in, shining and gorgeous, and it utterly took his breath away. “Is it like this everywhere?” He asked, glancing at the others.

“Everywhere on Wakanda or everywhere in the universe?” Sam asked.

“Either? Both?” Steve looked back up at the shining spires. The future wasn’t so bad if it was all like this.

“No,” Danny said. “Wakanda has some of the best technology in the human populated places in the galaxy. If not the best. Probably the only tech that’s better is the tech that Tony himself has, and it doesn’t really count because it’s Tony’s, so it’s owned by one person, not a country or a planet.”

“That Extremis thing of his is…” Sam started, and took a breath, shaking his head.

“There are plenty of planets that don’t have much. The people that live on Skull’s world, for example, either live in richness or in absolute poverty because they are part of his regime or they are the lower class. One or the other. There is no in between. So it is amazing that on worlds like this, most people live in relative luxury,” Jess said as they started to walk the streets.

As they walked, they stopped and talked to people. The translator technology allowed them to understand everything said around them, but not speak every language. Luckily Sam knew Wakandan - and apparently quite a few other languages - and so he tended to do most of the talking. The others occasionally chimed in with languages they knew, if someone they spoke to knew a different language. They talked to people about everything, their lives and their struggles and whatever they could. And while they were at it they spread stories of Captain America and the rest of the rebellion.

When they’d just seen the city from afar, he’d wondered if people at this level would even notice that Red Skull was ruling them, but there were signs of it everywhere. They were given allowances thanks to the wealth and the technological advancement of their world, but Red Skull still demanded things of them. Tribute in the form of food and minerals and technology that they produced, as well as a certain percentage of their healthy population being forced to go into the Red Skull’s service, picked at random. Sometimes they were returned, and sometimes they weren’t. They told stories of having worked in Skull’s military or sometimes having been experimented on extensively.

It made Steve want to defeat the Skull even more, hearing examples of people having experienced real suffering at Skull’s hands, and knowing that people in poorer areas or on poor planets had it even worse.

They had lunch at a small cafe near the city’s center at midday, and then began heading back to where they’d left their transport, using a different route so that they could encounter even more people. About the same time they got back to the transport, Steve’s computer began to chirp in his pocket. He pulled it out and enlarged it a little bit, pressing a large green button in the center. Tony’s face appeared up on it, and he grinned at him.

“Hey, you figured it out!” Tony said, grinning back at Steve and giving him a little wave.

“It wasn’t difficult. There was a big green button and a big red button. I assumed the green one was yes,” Steve explained. He may not have grown up around this technology, but he could understand it easily. It was very simple.

“Yeah, it is easy, isn’t it?” Tony agreed, “Anyway, if you guys haven’t started heading back, start now. T’Challa is having the people here start dinner.”

“We just got back to the transport,” Steve said, and turned the screen around.

“Hey, you’ve got that figured out, too!” Tony said approvingly, though his tone was more than a little teasing. ‘You know how to point the camera!”

“Hush, you,” Steve said, grinning, “I’m going to press the red button and assume that it will make you go away. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“See you,” Tony laughed. Steve smiled fondly and turned it back around to press the red button, then resized the computer to fit in his pocket, putting it away and getting into the transport.

Sam whistled, and Redwing circled around, landing on his arm and preening himself a little as Sam got into the driver’s seat. For the most part they’d only seen Redwing out of the corner of their eyes all day, though the bird had joined them for lunch, eating some dead rodents that Sam had brought with him in a small container. It had been impressive, watching Sam toss the rodents into the air and Redwing swoop to catch them, but Steve had also been glad he was already done eating.

“He seems to have enjoyed himself,” Jess said, smiling.

“Yeah. He’s okay in the garden on the Avenger, but if I can let him out and let him fly a while somewhere a lot more open, he really loves it,” Sam said, grinning wide and stroking a finger down Redwing’s head affectionately.

* * *

 

Central Wakanda was even more impressive than N'Jadaka had been. Steve was amazed by how beautiful it was and how casually people used the amazing levels of technology that was there. It was probably the most impressive man-made thing he’d ever seen.

The palace was the most ornate building of them all, and seemed to have a motif that fit with the king, of large black cats. They were met at the front by Tony and the others, and Tony gave Steve a bit of a hug, leading them inside to a huge dining room with a long table. T’Challa sat at one end, bickering with a woman who was dressed similarly, another woman with dark skin and white hair sitting on T’Challa’s other side. When they came in, the bickering stopped and T’Challa stood.

“Welcome,” he gestured at the woman who was dressed similarly to himself. “This is my sister, Shuri,” he gestured to the other woman, “And this is Ororo Munroe.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Steve Rogers,” Steve said, approaching the table but hesitating before he sat.

“Sit anywhere,” Ororo said, and they did so. Steve and Tony made sure they sat together, out of a mutual but unspoken desire.

The food was spectacular, and the conversation was fascinating, as well. For the most part, Steve just listened, but it was still interesting. Apparently Ororo was T’Challa’s lover, but refused to marry him because she still spent at least half her time with another group on a planet called Genosha. From the sound if it, they had a blockade on them because they were actively rebellious rather than passively.

After dinner, they went and walked around the city. “We ended up trading about 70% of what Barnes had given me for the amount of refined vibranium he wanted. Which is pretty good, and probably about what he’d hoped for,” Tony said. “The refining process is very precise, very efficient, so T’Challa’s people can get far more refined vibranium than we traded for those materials from the refinement process. It works out well for everyone involved,”

“Good. I’m glad,” Steve said, feeling a swell of pride surge up in his chest at how well Tony, Jen, and Thor had done.

“They would go get it themselves, but one of the minerals that’s very rare on Wakanda is essential for certain kinds of spaceflight, so they’ve found that it’s more efficient to just trade for it with planets that have an abundance,” Tony added. Steve nodded, and they chatted about a few other things until they reached the market.

They hadn’t really been walking with any purpose, just walking, and now Steve perused with interest. He hadn’t seen a market in N'Jadaka -they’d probably been in the wrong district - and everything here was so beautiful and practical and a technological marvel. It was amazing.

“Do you want to buy something?” Tony asked after they went past a few stalls. “I have money that they’ll accept.”

“Can we?” Steve asked, glancing around eagerly. “Something that we can put in my rooms that will stay still when we enter and exit the atmosphere.”

“Something magnetic, then. Or something with a mount,” Tony nodded. They kept looking around the stalls until they came to one that had an assortment of small disks that would affix to whatever they put it on. The man at the stall showed them how it would work. Each disk had a particular kind of image projecting out of it, but they could set the times it would be on or off or if it would be a certain brightness. One of them had the same kind of black cat that seemed to be the symbol of Wakanda.

“What is that cat?” Steve asked Tony, watching as several of the black cats frolicked around on the disk, a large one and several babies. He already knew he wanted that disk to be their souvenir, but he wanted to know more about it first.

“It’s a panther,” Tony explained, “Black Panther is actually the title of the ruling person of Wakanda. T’Challa, currently, but his sister is also eligible for it. That’s why they dress the way they do. To honor them, the panther image is seen around Wakanda, all over.”

Steve watched the image - a hologram, Tony had called it - of the panthers playing for a few more moments before nodding. “This. I want this. Can we buy it?”

“Of course,” Tony nodded and said a few words to the shopkeeper, who deactivated the disk. They exchanged payment and then it was theirs.

They walked around a little bit longer, then they headed back to the transport, helping to load the vibranium. Ororo was there with the others.

“I’m going back to Genosha. I’m not in a hurry, though, if you have the time to take me with you.” she said. She’d looked regal and gorgeous and exactly like a queen in the dining room in the palace. Here she was dressed in very practical clothes and carried a worn bag slung over her shoulder and she still looked regal and gorgeous and like a queen. Steve glanced between her and Thor. There was something in the way they both held themselves, he decided. It was very similar.

“Of course, Ororo. We have to stop at зима first, to drop the cargo off, and depending on what the Soldier wants us doing afterwards it might be someone else taking you to Genosha, but we’ll take you as far as we can,” Jen said, smiling wide at her. “Come on aboard. I’ll show you to our guest rooms and you can have your pick.”

“Seems like things went well, based on what we got taken off and loaded on in exchange,” Jim said as they were finishing the final checks of the cargo hold.

“It did,” Tony said, sounding triumphant. “And Steve and I bought a little trinket. One of those holograph disks the Wakandan craftsman are so good at.”

“Yeah?” Jim asked, looking between them. Steve pulled it out and showed him, and Jim smiled a little, actually seeming really pleased by that.

Once the cargo was all stowed away, Steve went and put it in a place of honor on his dresser in his quarters, making sure it was firmly affixed before they lifted off.

* * *

 

The trip back to зима was slightly unusual.

Steve hadn’t realized how well he’d integrated with the rest of the crew until they’d begun to carry an actual passenger. By now Steve knew all of the shortcuts and how to easily get from one end to the other. He helped maintain the garden, he helped with the heavy lifting, and he cooked more often than any other crew member, mostly because he didn’t have any other regular duties and he was one of the better cooks. Ororo had traveled with the _Avenger_  before - they were one of the ships that regularly ferried people around for the rebellion, and one of the few that could easily slip past the Red Skull’s blockade on Genosha - but she was still relatively unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the ship. Likely because the _Avenger_  wasn’t the only ship that carried passengers, and each time Ororo flew with a different ship, she had to relearn it. Ororo, as a passenger, had no official duties. She helped out whenever she was needed, but she wasn’t required to, which no one minded.

What was downright bizarre was the strange electromagnetic and electrical interference that was happening. Whenever Ororo, Tony, and Thor were in the same room, Steve’s hair stood on end, and he felt static crackling everywhere. Every time he touched something metal around them, he got a shock. It was worse if he was standing very close to Tony.

So Jane spent as little time as possible as Thor during that time, which made it much better, but it still happened.

“Thor and Ororo both have similar powers,” Tony explained as Steve held something heavy for him while Tony did maintenance on … something. Steve really wasn’t sure what Tony did half the time. They were in the engine room, and that was really the extent of Steve’s knowledge. “Thor’s are tied to Mjolnir but Ororo’s come naturally. The ship is protected pretty well against that kind of thing when it’s just Thor, but they cause a kind of feedback effect when it’s both of them.”

“Even when Jane is Jane most of the time, not Thor?” Steve asked.

“Even then,” Tony nodded, “Her powers still exist, they’re just dormant, tied into the hammer. I’m sure you noticed that when she’s Jane the electrical feedback is less intense than when she’s Thor.”

“I have, yes,” Steve nodded.

“Things will be back to normal when Ororo is off the ship. But for now we get to have a bit more static everywhere,” Tony gave a little shrug.

Steve nodded a little bit. Now that they’d been to two different worlds and he’d seen the people there as well as the people on the _Avenger_ , it seemed to him like most of the people in the rebellion had powers, were involved with people with powers, or were different from Red Skull’s ideal human in some other way. Of course that made sense that they would be the ones rebelling from Skull, but it was especially interesting that most of them either had powers or were associated with people that had powers.

* * *

 

When they got back to зима, Bucky was thrilled at how well they’d done trading for the vibranium. “I can’t believe he let you have such a good deal.”

“In the end I think we did just what he wanted,” Jen said, shrugging a little, “He seemed less stubborn than usual. I think he was eager to trade with us.”

“He hid it well, but I believe that Jennifer is correct,” Thor said, nodding. “However, what I am uncertain of is why he did this and why he hid his true intentions from us.”

“Either he’s trying to support us more than before without making it obvious or he’s in a much more difficult spot than he was before,” Steve suggested, glancing between everyone who was gathered there to discuss it. In addition to Jen, Bucky, Thor, and Steve, Tony was there and so were several of Bucky’s deputies. Natasha was there, as well as a few people Steve had not previously met, named Jan, Hank, Clint, and Bruce. They’d been in the middle of some kind of meeting when the _Avenger_  had arrived, but Bucky had decided that it was more important to debrief them first, then continue with what the meeting had been about.

“Whatever his reasoning, it worked out well for us. And honestly, T’Challa and his sister have both been raised to rule. They can out maneuver us with their eyes closed. So if they’d wanted something more from us, we probably would have given it to them,” Bucky said.

“We also have Ororo on board as a passenger. She’s heading for Genosha,” Jen said, “So would you like us to take her to Genosha or do you have another mission for us?”

“Does anybody want to rotate out?” Bucky asked, glancing at them. Steve frowned a little bit. Rotate out? Did that mean that people sometimes got off the ship?

Tony shook his head. “Not that anybody has mentioned. And I’d know,” He tapped his head.

“Okay. Then stock up and get extra food and medicine. Genosha is under blockade right now so they need supplies. From the seed bank and from the normal stores, so they have both short term and long term supplies.” Bucky said.

“Anything else?” Jen asked, nodding.

“Take a cargo container. The biggest one,” Bucky added, “And fill it with what you need for them.”

Steve hadn’t realized they had a cargo container. The cargo hold in the _Avenger_  had seemed like it was enough, but if they needed enough to feed a planet under blockade, then they needed more space. It made sense, but he hadn’t previously even considered the idea, and he had no idea how they’d attach it to the ship.

“Okay,” Jen nodded again.

“That should be everything. If there’s more, I’ll make sure you’re told before you leave,” Bucky said. They nodded and headed out, Steve following Tony automatically.

“I’m sure you have questions about that,” Tony said as they walked, glancing over at him.

“Yes, I do. People rotate out? And how are we going to bring a cargo container with us?” Steve asked, frowning slightly.

“They do. I’m about the only one who can stand staying on the ship all the time, so the others rotate on and off the ship. Jan is one of the people who will take over for Jen, for example, and Bruce takes over for Thor and Jane. Usually people get restless after about six months to a year on the ship. It’s not a set rotation, though. Just whenever they want to get off the ship,” Tony explained as they headed to the cargo areas. That sounded lonely to Steve, if everyone else left after six months or a year. He was about to ask if even Jim - who seemed to be closer to Tony than anyone but Edwin - left, too, but Tony continued, answering Steve’s other question, “And as far as how we bring a cargo container, we have something called a tractor beam. It essentially grabs something, other than the ship itself, and pulls it towards the ship. We can set it to pull the other item into our cargo bay or set it to pull behind us at a certain distance. The cargo container Barnes wants us to bring with us is actually bigger than the _Avenger_ itself.”

“Does it make us go slower, hauling something like that behind us?” Steve asked.

“Not really. Space is a functional vacuum, though it isn’t what a scientist would call a perfect vacuum. There’s always something there, particles or energy or something. But at the speeds we travel in space it’s not a factor. If we were going much faster, it might be, or if there were much more particles, it would be,” Tony shrugged a little. They entered a huge bay area, even bigger than anything Steve had seen so far, and there were several large containers there. One of them was massive - as Tony had said, even larger than the _Avenger_  - and Tony went over to it. He typed into a panel next to the massive door of the container, and it opened. It looked empty, and Tony went in to check it out before nodding and coming back out.

“What now?” Steve asked, curiously. “Do we load it up here or move it first?”

“The ceiling opens, and we can pick up the container loaded or empty from here,” Tony gestured towards the ceiling of the bay area, which, now that Steve looked at it, clearly had a seam running down the middle. “So we could do either. But because we’re getting food, we want to load it up before taking it into the cold. The container itself is climate controlled, but moving the boxes won’t be. We’ll need to use machines to do it, and that’s easiest done inside,” he went over to the wall and touched a computer panel, but didn’t use it. Instead the black film spread over his eyes again, and he stood very still.

Steve frowned. He hadn’t been expecting that. It was eerie to watch Tony just stand there, unmoving, darkness covering his eyes. So far everyone had done a very good job of explaining everything about the future, with the exception of Extremis. They all just seemed to think either that someone else would explain it to him or that he would ask if he wanted to know. Steve had been waiting for an explanation from Tony, because he had picked up a few things that it could do, here and there, but he had a feeling he really had no idea.

After several long moments of just watching Tony, wondering if he should go get someone or wait for Tony to move again, he heard a noise behind them and spun around, shifting automatically into something of a protective stance. Steve knew they were safe here, but he had been so focused on Tony that he hadn’t heard anyone near them. And apparently for good reason. Instead of other people, there was a line of robots, moving quickly to load up supplies into the large container that they would be taking. They were fast and efficient, more than the same number of humans could have been, and after a few more minutes, Tony moved to stand beside him, his eyes blue once again.

“They’ve been instructed to fill the container, then go back to their docking stations and await further orders,” Tony said, glancing at the container. “It should take them hours to fill it, and they’ll alert me once it’s full.”

“Is there anything else that has to get done between now and then?” Steve asked.

“I have some parts to swap out on the _Avenger_. Things that have natural wear and tear that needs to get replaced with fresh parts.” Tony shrugged. “You should talk to Barnes while I do that. Catch up with him.”

“Are you sure? I could always keep you company,” Steve reached out and took Tony’s hand, squeezing gently. He had found that he loved spending time with Tony while Tony worked. Most of the time Steve read up on the history that he’d skipped over, or experimented with one of the spare computers - not his own, because he didn’t want to break his.

“Yes, I’m sure. Since we’re spending so long docked, everyone else will be at the base, and if it’s just the two of us on the ship, I’ll be more distracted than anything,” Tony kissed Steve, then pulled back, grinning. “I’ll find you when I’m done, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve nodded, smiling.

* * *

 

It was getting late by the time Tony found him. They were going to have dinner with Bucky, Natasha, and the others who led the rebellion on зима, and Tony didn’t appear again until right before dinner, though he did manage to corner Steve when he was all alone. Tony had a small package wrapped in plain brown paper in his hands, and was practically vibrating with excitement as he handed the package to Steve.

“You got me something?” Steve asked, confused.

“Yeah!” Tony nodded, giving him a smile that looked a lot more unsure than Steve thought Tony intended it to look.

Steve smiled, carefully opening the paper and pulling out the items inside. It was a strange looking inkpen and a paper notebook. The pages of the book were a little rough, like it had been made by hand, but the pen was sleek and futuristic, and had some kind of display on one side. “Thank you, Tony,” Steve said, finding an unexpected lump in his throat. He’d tried drawing on the computers - their screens could be touched, so they could be drawn directly on, and while he was getting the hang of it, it wasn’t the same as having a pen and a piece of paper.

“The pen will connect with your computer. It simultaneously records what you’re drawing and will also change colors based on input you give it from the computer. I’ll show you later. There’s a few different kinds of ink in it so it’ll mix and give you any color you want. You can even set it to erase things,” Tony said, and pointed at the display. “This will tell you which color is selected currently. And I got the notebook from somebody here on зима. I contacted them ahead of time and made sure it’d be ready when we got here.”

That made Steve smile even more, and he reached over, tugging Tony close and kissing him firmly. When he broke apart several moments later he said, breathless, “Thank you so much, Tony. They’re really thoughtful gifts.”

“You’re welcome, Steve,” Tony smiled, wide and bright and it lit up Steve’s world. “You do all kinds of kind little things for me all the time - bringing lunch to me when I’m working, making sure I get enough sleep, things like that - I wanted to do something nice for you, too.”

“You already have, Tony. You’ve done so much for me already,” Steve said, kissing him again, more chastely this time. “But speaking of food, it’s time for dinner. Come on, Bucky said we’re having a big dinner with everybody.”

Tony nodded, linking their fingers together and following him to the large mess hall where they were going to eat, sitting near Bucky and Natasha on one side and Edwin on the other. The other members of the _Avenger_ ’s crew sat spread out around the tables, everyone chatting animatedly with the ones they were sitting near. Steve smiled when he looked out at the assembled group. This was good. They felt like family. And as they continued to fight Red Skull, Steve knew they would be able to win if they worked together.

* * *

 

They loaded up the Avenger and headed to Genosha as soon as they could, the cargo container trailing behind them, loaded full to bursting with aid for Genosha. Ororo was on board again, and they were taking her all the way to Genosha. It was a bit of a longer trip than the trip from Wakanda to зима had been, and only a few days away from Genosha, on one of Steve’s turns to cook, Ororo taught Steve how to cook with the spices and herbs of her two homeworlds. It was delicious, and Steve hoped to be able to recreate it sometime later, considering the others all also liked it.

After dinner, Steve was sitting in the room with the large window, the one that Tony had shown him the stars out of so many weeks ago now, and was sketching in his notebook. There were already several pictures of Tony working on the Avenger, of the crew at dinner, of the other rebels in the base at зима, but this sketch was from memory. A summer’s night in New York, hot and sticky, the kids in his neighborhood playing in the spray from a fire hydrant, the perspective from the fire escape of his apartment, where Steve had gone to cool off that evening, the spray falling on him in a fine mist. It was a common enough sight in the city, one that had happened more than once in the summers where Steve had lived at that particular apartment, and so Steve could easily sketch it from memory.

He’d just blocked out several of the other buildings when he heard footsteps outside the door, then the door slid open. Tony’s voice was unsurprising - he always seemed to know where to find Steve. He suspected it was part of Extremis, but he’d never really asked anyone what all of Tony’s abilities with Extremis were, so he wasn’t sure.

“Mind if I join you?” Tony asked, and Steve glanced up to see that Tony held in his hand one of the few paper books that they actually had on board from the library. It wasn’t something Steve had ever read, though it looked old. It was newer than Steve, though. He’d flipped through most of the books, because as much as he liked the selection on the computers, he liked holding books in his hands better, and he’d noticed that all of the physical books were from long after him - both the original dates of the reprints and the originals themselves - and so he’d focused on reading the books on the computer that had been later books from authors he’d known, first, and then branched out and read other authors. The one Tony held now was one he didn’t recognize.

“Go right ahead,” Steve smiled. He was sitting against the wall, on a cushion he’d dragged into the room, and scooted over to give Tony room to sit next to him. Tony sat, snuggled up beside him, and started reading. Steve smiled wider and kissed Tony’s head. It wasn’t often they got a chance to just sit - most of the time one or the other of them had something to do, and more often they both did. Jen was teaching Steve how to captain the Avenger, so that he could take over for her in a rotation soon. Maybe not the next time, but soon.

Tony wasn’t even sitting next to Steve for 15 minutes when he made a whining noise and shut the book, doubling over and holding his head in his hands. “Fuck. Steve, turn the coms in the room on - get a hold of Rhodey or Carol or Jen - I think we’re flying into a solar flare.”

Steve was more worried about making sure Tony was all right, but he did as Tony asked, standing and going over to the panel near the door, turning the coms on and opening the channel to every room. “Jen, Jim, Carol?” He asked, and he could hear the worry in his own voice. If Tony had needed the coms on, he could have done it himself. Steve had seen him do it on his own more than once. “Anyone?”

“I’m here, Steve. What is it?” Jim said, voice calm and rational.

“Tony looks hurt, and he said we’re flying through a solar flare,” Steve glanced back at Tony, who was writhing on the cushion. Steve made sure the coms would stay on, then ran over to Tony, kneeling next to him.

“Fuck. Where are you?” Jim asked.

At the same time, he heard Jen say, “Damn it. If we’re hitting something strong enough that Tony’s going down, the ship’s going to be offline soon, all except essential systems.”

“I don’t know what this room is called,” Steve said, cradling Tony in his lap, “There’s a big window looking out on the stars.”

“I know where you are. I’ll be there soon,” Jim said.

“Thanks,” Steve said, stroking Tony’s hair with one hand and gently feeling down his body with his other hand. He felt fine, like he was uninjured, though his heart was fluttering, beating far too fast, and his chest was heaving with breath. Steve felt helpless. There was something wrong with Tony and he had no idea how to help.

It felt like an agonizingly long time later, but it was probably was only a few minutes, when Jim ran into the room. Steve looked up and watched Jim rush over to kneel beside them, his worried expression mirroring how Steve felt.

“Tones,” Jim said, quietly, looking at Tony, “Can you stand? We need to get you somewhere more shielded than this room,” Tony shook his head, and Jim looked up at Steve, “Can you carry him?”

“Yes, of course,” Steve picked him up, gently, one arm under his shoulders and one under his knees, and followed Jim, who had grabbed the cushion Steve and Tony had been sitting on, Tony’s book, and Steve’s drawing stuff. Tony curled a little in his arms and nuzzled against Steve’s chest. “Where are we going?”

“There’s a room deep in the ship that’s the most shielded against solar flares. It houses the communications equipment as well as the life support. We’re taking him there. Some damage is already done, so he’ll be out of commission for a while, but this will make sure he’s not going to get hurt any further,” Jim explained, walking briskly. Steve didn’t have any trouble keeping up with him, but he did glance down at Tony every so often, at the pained lines of his forehead and around his eyes. Around them, things were starting to go wrong. Lights were flickering and in some places going out completely. Down one hallway, as they passed it, Steve could hear Luke swearing at one of the doors.

“I don’t understand. I don’t know much about solar flares, but I didn’t think they hurt people,” Steve said to Jim as Jim led them into a small room with a large control panel set in the wall, looking like central controls for several of their systems, putting the cushion and Steve’s and Tony’s things on the ground.

“The reason why it hurts Tony is because of Extremis,” Jim gestured to the cushion. “We’re going to be here a while. You should sit,” He shut the door behind them and Steve sat.

“No one has really explained Extremis to me. They just talk about it like I should know what it is,” Steve looked down at Tony, who still looked like he was in pain, but less so. The lines on his face weren’t as deep. That was good.

“I’m not sure where it came from or why Tony did it, but I know Extremis started as a virus. A virus made of nanobots. Nanobots are very small robots. Unlike some of the other way we use nanotech, this virus essentially rewrites the body of the person that it is injected into. It’s very rare - as far as we know Tony is the only person with Extremis inside of them in the universe - because there’s an extremely low survival rate and the woman who designed it isn’t working on this sort of thing anymore. Tony assured me of that, though I don’t know how he’s so certain himself. Anyway, Tony injected himself with it, for some reason, though he did say that he was close enough to dead that the low survival rate wasn’t a factor,” Jim said, shaking his head a little as he watched Tony, who had his eyes closed and Steve wasn’t sure if he was unconscious or not, “Extremis heals him quickly. So it saved his life rather than kill him. It also basically turns him - and especially his brain - into a living computer. That’s how he talks to the ship the way he does, how he does almost everything he does. From my understanding, based on what Edwin Jarvis says, he’s always been excellent with technology, and this has just made it easier for him to interface with it. But unfortunately it has also given him a weakness.”

“The solar flares?” Steve said, looking down at Tony, stroking his hair a little, soothingly.

“Yes, and other things like it. Anything that damages a computer or electronics can hurt him. Normally the ship is shielded from minor solar flares, but this one must have been huge if it hit Tony and is hitting the ship. Tony is less shielded than the ship itself, but he’s inside the ship, so the ship’s shielding should have protected him,” Jim explained.

“So what kind of damage does a solar flare do to computers?” Steve asked after a few minutes. Tony had finally relaxed in his arms a little bit, leaning against Steve’s chest even more than he had before.

“It scrambles it a little. Turns it off. Fortunately he has a healing factor, so he will recover, and then once he’s recovered, he’ll be able to fix things wrong with the ship, but it’s going to take him a while to bounce back once the flare goes away. They’ll come get us when the flare fades,” Jim explained.

“How long do we have to wait?” Steve asked, shifting a bit and getting more comfortable. If they were going to be there for a while, he wanted to be comfortable.

“I’m not sure. Probably a few hours, at least,” Jim sat on the cushion, too, next to Steve and watching Tony.

Steve nodded a little bit and let out a sigh, leaning against the wall. After a little while, he asked, “How did you and Tony meet?”

“He and I were sent on the same mission for the rebellion. We weren’t sent on it at the same time, but rather met up in the middle, and ended up saving each other’s asses,” Jim explained, grinning. “Mostly I saved his, but he was really helpful, too.”

“He does get into an awful lot of trouble, doesn’t he?” Steve said fondly.

“To be fair, it’s not usually his fault,” Jim shrugged.

* * *

 

It took about three hours for Tony to wake up, and when he did it was with a whine, rubbing his face against Steve’s chest and bringing a hand up to massage his temple.

“You okay?” Steve asked, watching Tony carefully, trying not to jostle him.

“I’ll be fine,” Tony said, opening his eyes slightly and giving Steve a little smile. “I just have a headache. That’s all. The flare is fading, I can tell.”

“Good,” Jim said from beside Steve, and Tony twisted a bit to look at him, grinning wider.

“Oh hey, you’re here, too!” He said, grinning, “I thought I remembered you from before. Glad you stuck around.”

“I’ve been telling him stories about you. Steve loves it,” Jim said, and Tony made a face.

“I need to get Edwin alone sometime, too, and get him to tell me some Tony stories, too,” Steve said, just for the expression that Tony made - halfway pleased and halfway displeased, looking like he didn’t want to admit to how happy it made him knowing that Steve wanted to know more about his past.

“Next time we’re at зима I need to ask Bucky for more stories about you,” Tony grumbled.

“That might not work so well,” Steve said, “After all, Bucky and I didn’t meet each other until the war. He’ll have a lot of stories about that, but not so much about my childhood.”

Tony was quiet for a moment, then he leaned up and kissed Steve’s jaw. “I’m sorry you don’t have anyone I can ask about your childhood.”

There had been enough going on since Steve had joined the crew of the _Avenger_  that he hadn’t thought too much about the fact that he was so far removed from everyone he knew. It helped that they’d drawn him in so far, and that he’d so quickly found Bucky again. But the reminder was still painful, and he gave Tony a sad smile. “I’m sorry, too. I’d like for you to be able to talk to someone, get embarrassing stories the way I get them about you.”

“At least I don’t miss out on you,” Tony said, leaning up and kissing Steve again, this time on the lips. It was warm and soft and wonderful, and Steve shifted his arms around Tony, holding him close as he kissed deeper.

“That’s enough out of the two of you,” Jim teased, grinning at them. “Remember, I’m in here with you.”

“You can go if you want,” Tony said, settling back down in Steve’s lap.

“And risk lowering the shielding for as long as it takes for me to leave? I think not,” Jim shook his head. “It won’t take long, but it’d be long enough to make you feel worse. I’m not leaving until the flare has faded completely.”

* * *

 

Tony fell asleep again soon after that, and Jim dozed, too. Steve didn’t really think he had fallen asleep, but the knock at the door startled him into wakefulness and made him tighten his grip on Tony.

“Guys? The sensors say that the flare is gone,” Jane said, “And I checked as Thor, too. Electromagnetic activity is stable, or as stable as it’s going to get under these circumstances.”

Jim stood, stretching a little bit, and nodded, “Okay, we’ll open the door here in just a second. It’s boring in this place - we all fell asleep.”

“She can’t open it from out there?” Steve asked, curiously.

“Not without going through a lot of difficulty,” Tony said, nuzzling against Steve’s chest and not opening his eyes again yet. “There are more security protocols on the outside than the inside, because presumably if you’re locking yourself inside you’re doing it because you’re trying to protect yourself from something. It can be accessed from the outside, but it’s hard to do. Unless you’re me. I can get in pretty easily. Thank you Extremis.”

Jim went over to the door and opened it, and Jane smiled at them a little. “Can you walk yet, Tony?” she asked, curiously.

“Yeah, I can,” Tony said, but it was a long moment before he stood and proved it. He seemed a little wobbly, and he held a hand up to his forehead like it pained him, but he was standing on his own.

“Well, come on to the medbay so I can check you over, and then you can do whatever you were going to do with the ship,” Jane said, smiling a bit more, “I’d like it if you stayed longer, but I know you’re going to run around trying to get the ship up and running as soon as possible.”

That made Tony grin a little, though the edges looked pained, and he followed Jane and Jim to the medbay easily. Steve followed Tony, making sure he was steady on his feet. He was pronounced to be as healthy as could be expected, and as Jane predicted he was off trying to get the ship back up and running right away.

That didn’t mean he stayed on his feet, though. Within a few hours he was heading to bed, sleeping a full night before getting back to work the next day. He didn’t stay awake as long that day, either, and Steve noticed that he seemed pained then, too. Tony seemed better every day, and seemed fine on the third day. On the fourth day, they were ready to continue.

* * *

 

“Steve, can you come to the cockpit?” Jen asked, when they arrived in the solar system and slowed down to approach the planet.

“Yeah, sure,” Steve said. He was in the garden, tending the crops, but that could wait for whatever it was that Jen needed. Standing, he went and rinsed his hands off and then headed to the cockpit. On the front window the screen was showing a planet, blue and green with white clouds, and beautiful. It looked a little like Earth, but the continents were all wrong.

Surrounding the planet were dozens of large ships, highlighted by the _Avenger_ ’s readouts, labeled as Red Skull’s. Jen watched Steve for a moment as he looked it over and manipulated the information, seeing everything he could about it. They knew the sensor ranges on the ships, their speed and maneuverability, what sort of weapons capability they had. It was really quite impressive.

“So?” Jen asked eventually, “How do you think we’re going to get through?”

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted. “It looks like they have a really through sensor system set up. How are we going to get through?”

“Tony. He’s upgraded the stealth capabilities on the _Avenger_  to the point where we can get through almost anything. When we get close enough, we’re going to turn the stealth capabilities on. We can’t run it for too long - a day or most at a time - or we’d just go through the whole universe like that. This won’t take nearly that long, though. Only a few hours,” Jen said, giving Steve a little smile.

Steve smiled back. It sounded like Tony was extremely useful for the ship, making them one of the best, if not the best, ships in the rebellion. They had the best crew, too, and Tony reassured him that their rotational crew was just as top notch as everyone currently on the _Avenger_.

It took a few hours for them to get close enough to need the stealth systems, and Jen showed him how to engage them. By that point, Carol was in the cockpit, too, and she began to navigate the ship through the blockade. Even with the stealth technology making the ship effectively invisible they still needed to be careful, and that meant having one of their better pilots navigating them through the blockade.

Despite the fact that once they got close enough, they couldn’t even see any of the other ships, the trip still made Steve nervous.

“Think you could unclench, Steve?” Carol asked, arching her eyebrows at him, looking amused.

“Sorry,” Steve said, shifting a little in his seat and letting go of the arms of the chair. His knuckles were white.

“Yeah, it’s not a big deal. Just when you’re nervous it makes me think we’re going to spontaneously combust or something. But, hey, at least I can probably blame spontaneous combustion on Tony,” Carol grinned and waggled her eyebrows at him a bit, and Steve laughed.

When they finally landed on Genosha, Tony stubbornly refused to get off the _Avenger_.

“One of the leaders of the rebellion here controls magnetism. He gives me a headache on a good day. Still recovering from the flare, I don’t want to be anywhere near him. You should go and connect with the local populace, but I’m staying here,” Tony said, shaking his head and refusing to even get close to the exit ramp.

“Are you sure? Not that you’re staying - clearly you are - but that I should go without you? I can stay, too,” Steve asked, rubbing a hand up and down Tony’s arm a little. Tony leaned into the touch slightly, but nodded.

“Yes. We’re trying to build up your reputation, remember? It will help you to go and mingle, regardless of if I’m here or there,” Tony said.

“Okay. Call us on the coms if you need anything,” Steve smiled and kissed Tony, briefly, then headed out with the others.

When they exited the ship, there were two older men waiting for them. One was in a wheelchair and bald and the other was standing by his side, with silvery white hair. Ororo went over and hugged both of them tightly, smiling wide.

“You must be Captain America,” The bald man said, holding out a hand to Steve. Steve smiled and shook it.

“Yes, I am. Pleasure to meet you ...?” Steve said, trailing off and attempting to fish for a name.

“Charles Xavier, and this is Erik Lehnsherr,” The man said, “We’re the leaders of the rebellion here.” Steve glanced between the two of them, wondering which one controlled magnetism and Charles laughed, “I’m a telepath, and Erik is the one who controls magnetism.”

“Oh. So you can hear what I’m thinking?” Steve asked, curiously.

“Yes, he can,” Erik nodded.

“Barnes sent us with all kinds of aid for Genosha. There’s some in the cargo hold and the entire container is for you,” Jen said, gesturing. “Keep the container for a while, until you can empty it, then have someone sent to come pick it up.”

“How long are you staying?” Charles asked, glancing between them.

“A day, maybe two. Tony is watching the ship - we hit a solar flare on the way here, and he got kind of fried - so we have time. We can help pass out some of the food and medication that we brought with us,” Jen said, glancing at the others, who nodded, approving of that plan.

“Good. We can certainly put you to work handing out supplies,” Charles said with a smile.

* * *

 

They used a tractor beam to move the container to a better spot to hand out the supplies, then worked out how to best unload the cargo. Much of the rebellion were set to unloading the cargo and once enough of it was unloaded, Steve, Ororo, Sam, and a few others took the first load of food and medicine out to spread around.

It was haunting, how familiar some of it was. The technology was different, yes, but many of the people were starving, or dying of illness, and that look never changed. Steve had seen that look far too much in the war. It made him hate Skull even more.

So many of them, even the dying, knew who Steve and the other rebels were, though. Especially the children, who were fascinated by Steve and his shield, or Sam and Redwing, or other tales of the rebels that weren’t currently present.

“How are these stories spreading so fast?” Steve asked Sam after they’d moved on from one knot of children, Redwing sitting on Sam’s arm, puffed up indignantly. He’d tolerated being petted moderately well, but then one very small child had pulled on a feather, and he had not been pleased with that.

“Faster than light communication. We spread stories on Wakanda. They knew people on Genosha, behind the blockade, and in their letters or calls they told them about the rebels and their leaders, the people that make Skull tremble in his boots,” Sam explained.

“And I have been calling home and speaking with people I know here while on our journey. I dislike sitting around while traveling, and after I heard of your plan to use stories about the rebels as propaganda against Skull, I knew I would be very suited to help.” Ororo said.

They continued to hand out aid for a while, and eventually Steve turned to them and asked, “Why is this planet different from Wakanda and зима? Why does it seem like this world is so much worse off than they are?”

“We’re only one system away from Schädel,” Ororo said, “And the rebellion here is far less subtle than the rebellion on Wakanda. On зима, they are far enough away from Skull, and hidden, so it’s difficult for Skull to locate them. They move around every few years, going to habitable but currently uninhabited planets and using that as a new base.”

“So, between their proximity and sheer audacity, Skull is simply more aware of Genosha?” Steve asked.

“Basically. And there’s also the sheer number of the powers found here. Most everyone born on Genosha, for some reason, have some kind of power. Ororo has her weather control, Charles has telepathy, Erik controls metal, there’s a woman here who can walk through walls. It’s amazing the kinds of powers the people here have,” Sam said, grinning.

“That’s amazing! Everyone here?” Steve asked Ororo.

“Most everyone,” Ororo nodded, “Though not every power is as flashy as ours are. Some are simply cosmetic - horns or blue skin or something.”

“Still though. Your people are amazing,” Steve said, in awe of them.

They kept handing out aid, and it took them until that night before they ran out of everything they needed to hand out. Of course, that wasn’t everything that they’d brought - it had just been the first round to come off the cargo container. When they ran out, they headed back to find a modest dinner waiting for them. It wasn’t anything like the dinner they’d had at Wakanda, or even at зима, but it was delicious.

The others from the _Avenger_  clearly knew those from Genosha, and they kept the conversation going very well. About halfway through, Steve asked Erik, hesitantly, “Could I ask you for a favor?”

“What do you need?” Erik asked, looking curious. He and Charles were seated next to each other, leaning together slightly.

“I was wondering if you could make something. You see, Tony and I are … we’re together, and since then, we’ve sort of fallen into this tradition of picking up a souvenir on every planet we visit. I was thinking that there’s nothing better than something hand crafted by you, shaped with your powers,” Steve had gotten a better idea of the extent of Charles’ and Erik’s powers through the day, as they’d chatted about various things.

Erik’s eyebrows arched, then he glanced at Charles. They seemed to have a conversation, smirking and smiling and emoting at each other, though they didn’t speak to each other in any way Steve could hear. Maybe they were communicating telepathically. Eventually Erik turned to Steve and nodded. “All right. Let me …” Glancing around, he found a fork and a spoon no one had used, picking both up and holding his hand out. They floated above his hand and twisted and reshaped in his hand. The fork became a tiny model of Tony’s armor, posed for battle, and the spoon became a tiny model of the _Avenger_.

“Thank you so much! They’re beautiful,” Steve said when Erik, looking pleased with himself, handed them over.

“You’re welcome. Next time make sure you bring Stark, despite his objections - I enjoy disturbing him with my powers,” Erik said, a mischievous smirk on his face.

Steve let out a little laugh, and nodded. “I’ll make sure he comes with me next time.”

* * *

 

Tony loved the little metal models when Steve showed them to him, after they’d lifted off and pulled out of Genosha’s solar system and were on their way back to зима, kissing his cheek and hugging him tightly. “This was really thoughtful, Steve. Thank you,” He peered at them and put them on the dresser, beside the disk that held the image of the panthers. “We’re starting to get a nice collection here.”

“And it’s something we’re building together,” Steve said, kissing Tony on the side of the head, standing behind him and looking at the dresser.

“It is.” Tony smiled a little, tilting his head and arching his neck. Steve leaned down and kissed Tony’s neck, and Tony moaned a little, pressing back against him. They’d kissed and rubbed against each other a little, but hadn’t done much more, neither one of them really ready yet for more. Apparently Tony had recently had a relationship with a woman who was involved in the rebellion on one of the planets they hadn’t been to yet, or even gone near, and they’d broken it off because Tony got restless when he spent too long on a planet. She hadn’t wanted to leave her world, and they couldn’t make it work apart. He hadn’t wanted to jump into a physical relationship any more than Steve, who still occasionally wondered if he was going to wake up to find out this was all a dream, had.

But this seemed like it had potential. Steve kept mouthing at and kissing Tony’s neck, and Tony was moaning. He twisted in Steve’s arms and pushed his leg between Steve’s. They were so similar in height that everything pressed together deliciously. Steve could feel Tony’s cock rubbing against his hip, already mostly hard, rubbing against the same place on Steve that Steve’s cock was rubbing against Tony.

“Steve?” Tony asked, after several moments, quietly, breath ghosting over Steve’s ear, lips dragging against his skin, “I’m so ready for this, Steve. If you are, too, I want to have sex.”

Steve bit against the spot on Tony’s collarbone he’d been kissing at, and Tony moaned louder. He picked up Tony and carried him to the bed, tugging their clothes off hurriedly and reaching into the nightstand for lubrication.

“How?” Steve asked, kissing up and down his body. “How do you want to do this?”

“I don’t know. Something simple. Something…” Tony moaned as Steve licked at his nipple, then said, breathless, “Something fast. I can’t hold off for long. It’s been a long, long time.”

Steve nodded, and fumbled with the lube, squirting it onto his hand. It made a squelching noise, and Tony laughed a little underneath him. Laughing, too, Steve rubbed it between his fingers, because it felt cold, then grasped his and Tony’s cocks together, stroking them and thrusting together.

Tony moaned and gripped Steve tightly around his shoulders, tangling their legs together. Steve felt like his senses, already a little enhanced because of the serum, were on overdrive. Tony’s cock was hard and slick and velvet, and he felt amazing under Steve.

True to his word, Tony didn’t last long, but Steve didn’t either. Steve actually came first, pumping them harder and thrusting faster until he came with a shuddering groan, splattering over them. Tony kissed him under his ear, along his jaw, and Steve felt his hand join Steve’s, stroking Tony to finishing, his come joining Steve’s on their bellies.

They were still breathing a little bit heavily when Tony’s eyes went black, then the room coms activated, and Luke’s voice sounded. “Hey, sorry about this. I know everyone is probably trying to sleep, but we just got a distress signal from a nearby world - less than a day away. It’s uninhabited, but the signal is Quill’s. I didn’t think he was supposed to be around here, but you know Quill and his rabble.”

Steve frowned at Tony, who was looking worried. He’d ask later who Quill was.

“Reroute us there and let anyone else in the area that we’re going to investigate it,” Jen said, and it sounded like she was moving around. “All hands on deck. Jane?”

“Do you need me or Thor?” Jane asked, neutrally.

“The distress signal didn’t specify wounded, but they didn’t say no one was wounded, either,” Luke said.

“Then we want you as Jane,” Jen said, “Just in case. Luke, stay on the bridge. Danny, help Jane. Everyone else prep for a rescue mission for Quill. Non fliers in Defenders, fliers in airlocks once we get to the coordinates. We’re not landing, just in case we have to leave again quickly.”

The coms died, and Tony pushed the blankets back. “At least we finished with the sex. Help me shower?”

Steve smirked a little. “That sounds like a good plan. And, Tony? Who is Quill?”

“Peter Quill. Leader of his own crew. They call themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy. He’s got some very alien looking aliens on his crew - there aren’t many true aliens left, not after Skull got done with them - but a lot of them are with the rebellion,” Tony said, shrugging a little. After a moment he added, a little awkwardly, “I spent time on Peter’s ship and we had a little bit of a thing. It wasn’t long after I joined the rebellion, and it was fun and exhilarating. It didn’t last long, though.”

“It sounds like just what you needed at the time, then,” Steve said, unsure what else he could say to that. He didn’t disapprove, of course, though they hadn’t really talked too much about each other’s sexual history. But he did want to make it clear he didn’t disapprove. “We’ll make sure he and his crew are all right.”

Tony smiled and nodded, and they went to shower and get ready together.

* * *

 

Quill wasn’t there.

Quill’s ship wasn’t there.

As far as Tony and every sensor Tony’s armor and the Defenders had could tell, Quill and his ship had never been there, or if they had been it hadn’t been in the recent past. It left specific energy signatures that would dissipate too quickly to be read in space, but once at the coordinates, they could scan for, and they hadn’t picked it up at all.

Steve was in the _Falcon_ , Sam’s Defender, and they landed and got out to look around the barren patch of earth that the signal had come from, and were now basically kicking at rocks and dirt. They were on a plateau, with a canyon surrounding them on three sides, one part of it breaking off into much more rocky terrain. Steve couldn’t help but think that that terrain could hide a lot of troops.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but I think we should pack it in and go back to the _Avenger_ ,” Jessica said, still in her Defender.

“Probably,” Steve said, the first thing he’d said since getting out of the _Falcon_.

And then all hell broke loose.

Small ships and men wearing jetpacks came pouring out of the canyon, mostly from the rocky terrain, in the crags and cracks and crevices perfect for hiding someone, all of them wearing either standard Hydra insignia or the mark of the Red Skull himself, marking them part of his own special force.

They were vastly outnumbered, so vastly outnumbered it wasn’t even funny. They didn’t stand a chance, Steve saw that at once. “Fall back! Everyone on the _Avenger_  now!” Steve shouted, blocking a shot from one of the Hydra goons with his shield.

“You’re not going to make it,” Tony said, almost immediately.

“Tony!” Jim shouted, realizing a moment before Steve what Tony was going to do.

“Tony, don’t!” Steve said, taking a few steps towards him.

“Carol grab him, drag him onto the ship if you have to,” Tony ordered, flying over the whole group and shooting as many Hydra people as he could reach, essentially buzzing them to try and irritate them into paying attention instead of the others.

“Tony, stop controlling my fucking Defender, let me help you!” Jim shouted, even as his Defender flew overhead back to the _Avenger_. Steve swore under his breath. Controlling that and his own armor at the same time had to be taxing on Tony. “If you’re gonna do this, be fucking smart! Run away and hide once you’re done with them.”

Carol grabbed Steve and pulled him towards the _Avenger_ , lifting him bodily and flying. Steve struggled against her, hard. “Tony, please, don’t. Please. I am begging you. Do what Jim says. Stay safe.”

“I am doing what I can to keep you safe.  _All_  of you. That’s my priority,” Tony said. It was not encouraging. He shot at several of the Hydra goons who were chasing Steve and Carol, causing them to break off and turn their attention back towards Tony.

“Carol, please,” Steve begged, twisting to look at her. “Take us back. We can help him.”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Carol said, even though she looked worried.

“No he doesn’t. He’s going to die. Please, Carol,” Steve said, pleadingly.

“Steve, we need to go. Your mission is more important. We are at war,” Carol said, and tossed Steve into the  _Avenger_. The cargo hatch closed behind them.

“I know sometimes you need to make sacrifices in war. I don’t necessarily like it. In fact, sometimes I fucking hate it,” Steve snapped, glaring at her, then at everyone else. He looked back at where the Hydra people were starting to swarm over Tony and his armor, and he growled and hit the wall, denting it.

“When Tony gets back, he’s going to pitch a fit about having to fix that,” Sam said, sounding far less hopeful than his words were.

* * *

 

Tony woke up in pain. He groaned a little, opening his eyes. After the  _Avenger_  had left, he’d been taken down pretty quickly. To be honest, he’d mostly just been stalling to make sure they could get away. Steve had looked devastated when Carol had pulled him away, and Rhodey had kept yelling for him until Tony had deactivated the coms, telling him to escape Skull’s forces and find somewhere to hide. The armor wasn’t capable of breaking the gravity well of most planetary bodies unassisted, so he would have had to found somewhere on world to hide.

He hadn’t. Shortly after the _Avenger_  had left, Tony had been overwhelmed, an EMP set off against his chest, knocking him out.

This pain was more than that. He glanced around, taking in the cell he was trapped in and the manacles on his wrist. That was very old fashioned. As was stripping him completely naked. The pain felt deep, though. Bone deep and through his whole body. He was just trying to figure out what would not only cause that but not be healed by Extremis when electricity shot through him. He curled up and screamed, feeling the Extremis react to the voltage and amperage of the electricity very badly.

The next thing Tony knew, he was on the floor, having fallen off the cot he was chained to, his wrists keeping him tethered to it. He was shaking and trembling, and something warm was dripping out of his nose. he moved over to wipe it off on his arm. Instead of snot or blood, it was black, the same color as the Extremis nanobots were when they were in liquid form, and it made Tony’s blood run cold.

The shock came again, and he screamed, writhing and bucking and possibly, if the fresh spike in pain was any indication, hitting his head on the bed frame. Eventually he felt the pain spiking in every orifice, and he felt the same warm liquid leak out of every opening larger than his pores. He threw up, evacuated himself, felt it leaking out of his ears and eyes and nose. It went on and on and by the time it finished Tony was covered in black goo, panting and in pain.

Blood trickled out from under the manacles, from where he’d chafed himself to the point of bleeding. He rested his head against the cot and once he had the energy to, he moved up to lay on it again, sighing.

Eventually he fell asleep, only to be awoken suddenly by the door of the cell, a large stone thing, being thrown open. He jerked, the manacles tugging painfully at his wrists. In the doorway were several large, burly Hydra goons, one of which came over and held him down while the other unchained him from the cot. They yanked him out of the room, taking him to another room that contained a hook in the ceiling, chains and a different pair of manacles attached to it, and a large table full of torture equipment. The floor was stone and cold. They chained him up there, the manacles thick and heavy, more than enough to hold his weight.

Once he was chained up, they left him there. He hung there by his wrists, the balls of his feet touching the ground for support, for a long time before the door opened again. He had dozed off a little, and jerked awake when he heard it open. The Red Skull, looking even more horrifying than he had imagined he would look in person, walked in. He looked over Tony, his face calm and calculating. Or so Tony thought. It was difficult to read his expression.

“It is good to finally meet you, Tony Stark,” Skull said, walking over to the table and peering at it, occasionally picking up an item, turning it over, and setting it back down.

“Finally, huh? I wouldn’t have thought that the supreme dictator of the universe would have any idea who I am,” Tony said, intentionally trying to irritate Skull. Maybe if he irritated him, Skull would get irrational and kill him, not torture him.

“You are very high up in the rebellion,” Skull said, his voice calm. “And from my understanding, you and Steve Rogers are … homosexual together. It is to my advantage to know everything I can about you.”

Tony scowled. This didn’t sound good - neither the words nor the distaste Skull had when talking about his and Steve’s relationship. Of course their relationship wasn’t going to be approved of by Skull’s regime, but he hadn’t expected this. Being personally tortured by the Red Skull for it didn’t make him regret it, but it was certainly going to make things awful for Steve, when this was over.

It probably wasn’t just about, Steve, though. Steve certainly made it a deciding factor, but Skull had mentioned that Tony was high in the rebellion, and they’d known enough about him to be able to get Extremis out of him. This was probably two pronged - torture and kill him to send a message to the rebellion and anyone even considering rebelling as a whole, and to Steve in particular. If you rebel, you’ll be killed like this, the message said, if you get close to Captain America, you die horribly.

Skull nodded at one of the guards, who went over to Tony, wrenching one leg back and tying it up, ankle to thigh. Skull picked up a thick pipe from the table and said, “You know, I sometimes feel like the high tech torture methods people are trying to devise now are too complicated. Too many things can go wrong. Of course, they are useful. We never would have gotten your Extremis out of you otherwise. But for pure torture, they can be far, far too complex. This method of torture has been around for thousands of years.”

Tony watched Skull walk around behind him and he jerked in the chains, trying to get away, but it was no use. The chains only had enough slack to allow him to stand on the ground, and even then only barely. There was a whistling noise as the pipe swung through the air, and then it hit his foot. Tony screamed, bucking away from the blow. More and more blows rained down on him, and he let out a sob as he felt the small, fragile bones in his foot shatter.

Eventually the rope tying his foot to his thigh was cut, and his foot was dropped unceremoniously to the ground. He let out a cut off yell, only to let out a full scream as his other foot was grabbed and tied up, beaten as well.

He was left there, much later, hanging limply in the chains, both feet twisted under him, bleeding and swollen. Just as he’d expected, Skull hadn’t asked him any questions, hadn’t made any demands. He was torturing Tony for the sake of torturing him. This was going to get bad.

* * *

 

Tony had been missing for almost a week when they finally heard word of him. They’d followed the Hydra ships back to Schädel, and had entered into orbit of a nearby planet, listening into the broadcasts and trying to figure out their next move. According to the news coming from Totenkopf, the capital city, there was going to be a public execution in several days. The prisoner, who was unnamed but the description - a dark haired rebel, born on a starship, who had been captured on a nearby world - fit Tony’s description, as did their timeline for having him. The prisoner was going to be held in a public place for several days, and the execution was going to be public and very violent.

“We have to go stop it,” Steve said, angrily, at dinner..

“You do realize this is probably a trap, right?” Sam asked, arching his eyebrows at him.

“Not just probably. Is. This **is** a trap,” Jen said. Danielle was in Luke’s lap, and she was starting to fuss a bit at all the raised voices.

“We still need to save him. He sacrificed himself for us!” Steve insisted.

“Steve, we can’t. He wouldn’t want us to risk ourselves to come after him,” Danny said, shaking his head and keeping his tone calm.

“Steve,” Jim said firmly. Steve looked at him, and Jim shook his head.

“Fine,” Steve slouched down in his chair, picking at his food. There was no way Jim was just going to give up on Tony like that - the man loved Tony just as much as Steve did, just in a different way - so he would tolerate letting the issue go. For now.

* * *

 

Later, once most everyone else had gone to bed, Steve heard a knock on his door. He had an idea who it was, and when he opened the door and saw Jim, outfitted in his flight suit, he was entirely unsurprised. Jim had a second flight suit in his arms.

“So what’s the plan?” Steve asked, stepping back and inviting him in, taking the flight suit from him and starting to put it on once the door was closed.

“We take my Defender,” Jim said. “If the two of us run down to the planet and pick him up, it might work better than the whole lot of us going.”

“Good,” Steve said, continuing to change his clothes. “I’m glad one of us is more subtle when it comes to Tony. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. But if we don’t save him, and we get captured there is gonna be hell to pay. Bucky is gonna be pissed at us,” Jim said, standing near the door and crossing his arms.

“I can see why you and Tony are best friends,” Steve said, dryly.

“Yeah. Probably the same reason why you two like each other,” Jim said, equally as dry.

Steve finished getting dressed and slung the shield on his back, and followed Jim out and to his Defender, the _War Machine_. Once they were in the ship, Jim typed an access code into the _War Machine_ ’s computer, and flew them out into space.

It was surprisingly easy to get through the defenses surrounding Schädel. They had to use the stealth technology when they got close, but once they breached the atmosphere there were almost no defenses. Almost like Skull didn’t imagine anyone would be brash enough to attack him in his own seat of power, so he didn’t defend it as rigorously. Or he had lowered his defenses to spring a trap.

They landed stealthed, and hid the  _War Machine_  under a small grove of trees. Hopefully it would remain out of sight enough for them to do this and get back to it and away safely.

They spotted more Hydra goons on the way to Totenkopf, but they ignored Steve and Jim.

“The flight suits are generic enough that they might not realize we’re rebels,” Jim said quietly, after they’d gotten past a group of guards. “Though I would think they would know what you look like, at least.”

“Maybe they do,” Steve suggested, “Maybe they’re letting us in, maybe they want us to find Tony. Springing a trap or … something.”

When they got to Totenkopf, it wasn’t hard to find Tony, and it was clear that Skull had wanted them to find him.

The city was old and had a central square, which contained a marketplace that seemed large, but was relatively empty. They discovered why when they got to the middle of it and saw a naked, bloody, almost unrecognizable body laying on a platform. The face had been left pristine, only smeared a little with blood where it was resting on one of the mangled, broken arms.

“Oh my god,” Steve heard himself say, and he could hear Jim retch a little behind him. Steve ran up to the platform, which - absurdly, had a tarp over it, like they didn’t want to stain the wood with Tony’s blood - and pressed a hand to Tony’s neck, leaning down and putting his ear next to Tony’s mouth, listening for breath. The blood was tacky and cool, his body no warmer than the air around them, which was taking on the bite of mid autumn. He couldn’t find a heartbeat.

“Jim - fuck - Jim!” Steve shouted over his shoulder, eyes stinging as he simultaneously tried to comprehend what was going on and tried not to. They’d started to build something together and now Tony was dead. Tony had been tortured to death, and dumped on a platform and just left there like trash. He looked around the square. There were no guards, and the people who would normally be filling the market were avoiding their eyes, looking away and pretending they didn’t see.

“Is he?” Jim asked, walking closer, voice trembling.

“Dead,” Steve said, stepping back off the tarp and gently, reverently wrapping Tony up, his eyes lingering for a moment on Tony’s face before he covered it. Aside from the blood, his face looked deceptively peaceful, but still dull and slack. Tony was never so still. Even when he was asleep, he was always moving and fidgeting. He mumbled in his sleep, usually nothing Steve could make out, but when it was loud enough it was usually about ship upgrades. Occasionally it was about the people Tony knew, or even sometimes utter nonsense. To see him so still was so wrong on so many different levels.

God, Tony must have been terrified. He had to have known this was an option - that would have been why he made sure he was the only one who got taken. Knowing this was an option would have made it even worse when it happened. But he had faced it anyway, and the bravery there made Steve’s chest ache.

Once Tony was wrapped up, Steve stood and carried him out of the square, flanked by Jim. They made it back to the _War Machine_  untouched. When they got there, Jim asked as he started his warm up procedures, “Why would Skull do that? Leave Tony like that for us?”

“Demoralization,” Steve said quietly, securing Tony in the small amount of cargo netting that the _War Machine_  had in the back. “We’ve been running a campaign of propaganda against him. He probably found out Tony and I are together - it’s not exactly a secret - and when he saw his chance, he took it.”

Jim didn’t say anything in response, though Steve thought he saw him nod as Steve stood and went to go strap in, himself.

When Jim turned the coms back on as part of the warm up, Jen’s voice was there, tight and sharp and worried. “What the hell do you two think you’re doing? Tony had better be there with you! If-”

“He’s dead,” Jim said, dull and flat and tired. That brought her up short, and she stopped, sighed, and switched gears.

“Are you on your way back?”

“Yeah. Clear the way between the hangar and the med bay. He’s … it’s bad, Jen,” Steve said, glancing back at the tarp wrapped bundle and feeling his eyes sting a little again. Despair threatened to wash over him and he clamped down on it. There would be time for that later.

“We will. We’re closer to your position, so it shouldn’t take too long to get to us,” Jen said, and sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Jim said, and the com went silent.

* * *

 

When they got back to the _Avenger_ , Steve went back and took Tony’s body, still wrapped in the tarp, carefully in his arms, carrying him to the med bay. Jim led the way, opening doors as they went. About halfway there, Carol found them, stopping Jim with a silent hand on his arm, and Jim hugged her tightly, breaking down into tears.

Steve could navigate from there by himself - there weren’t anymore doors left, except the medbay door itself, and Jane would be there for that - so he left them to their mourning.

Jane did let him in the med bay, and he laid Tony down on one bed, carefully unwrapping him and glancing at her. She hissed a breath when she saw him, but nodded and got to work. As she washed her hands she said, “You should go for this.”

“I’ll stay. What if you need someone to lift him or something?” Steve said, eyes on Tony’s too still face.

“That’s what Mjolnir is for,” Jane said, firmly. “You don’t need to see me cleaning him and readying him for burial.”

“How do you bury people here?” Steve asked, curious, imagining a beautiful grave marker somewhere he could visit often. That might be … well, not nice, but okay.

“That depends. Most of us are landborn, and so we would want to be actually buried, on some land or another. Tony is a starbaby. His people have space burials. Usually a ceremony followed by ejecting the body into the nearest sun,” Jane said. Steve stared at her, horrified, and when she saw the expression on his face she asked, “What?”

“They send the body into a sun to let it burn?” Steve asked. They would have nothing left of him? No grave or grave marker or even ashes?

“The universe was created in a large explosion, which created base elements. All heavier elements - the things humans are made of - are made in the bellies of stars, when they burn and fuse base elements together. We start in stars and the starbabies tend to see something poetic about ending in stars, too. Tony isn’t particularly religious, but the starbabies that are worship stars,” Jane explained.

If that was a tradition started by the starbabies, the ones born and died on the starships for generations, then it made a little bit more sense. He could understand them not wanting to waste space burying people. But he still wanted to keep something of Tony’s. Maybe he would find something. Maybe he could ask Edwin how starbabies handled it when someone important to them passed away.

“When?” Steve asked after a long moment.

“We’ll need to contact the others, especially зима. Barnes will want to be here, and so will Edwin Jarvis,” Jane said, “And possibly T’Challa, Xavier, some of the others. Most of them either really care for or really respect Tony. They’ll want to know, at the very least, and some of them will want to be here.”

“So it’ll take a while?” Steve asked.

“Probably,” Jane nodded. “Are you going to stay while I finish this up?” She gestured to Tony, and the way she was gently and carefully cleaning his body.

“No,” Steve said after a long moment. “Tell me when you’ve got him cleaned up, though, please.”

“I will,” Jane gave him a soft smile, and Steve watched her hands move, gentle and professional, over Tony’s body for a moment before he left the room.

He headed back to his room, stopping for a moment and staring at it with fresh eyes when he’d opened the door. It wasn’t just his anymore. They hadn’t made it official, but it was _theirs_. Tony had moved several of his own things in, so there were half finished engineering projects in his cabinets, stowed away neatly so that they wouldn’t fly around in the room during landings and takeoffs. He knew that if he opened the drawers or their closet, their clothes would be laid in together, actually rather well organized, between Steve’s army training and Tony’s somewhat controlling tendencies. And there were things that they’d gotten together, that belonged to both of them - like the hologram of the panthers affixed to the dresser. Things that reminded Steve of the life they were building together.

He went over and sat heavily on the bed, curling up and grabbing the pillow that was normally Tony’s, holding it tightly to his face and breathing in, still able to smell him, and wept.

* * *

 

Hours later, Jane called Steve back to the med bay. He’d dozed a little, but not enough to feel anything other than even more weary. When he got there, Tony was cleaned of blood and dressed in pale yellow plain clothing.

“The tradition of the starbabies is to dress the bodies in the same color wavelength of the star nearest to us. The one we’ll be using for the funeral,” Jane explained, quietly, as Steve went over to Tony, stroking a hand over his cheek.

“Did you or Jen or anyone else contact anyone yet?” Steve asked. He was having a hard time keeping his voice level. Tony looked like he would wake up at any moment. All of his injuries were covered, the blood was gone, and while he wasn’t wearing clothing that suited his personality or was anything like what he normally wore, he looked so peaceful.

“Not yet. We wanted to know if you had anything to tell them,” Jane said, watching him and speaking gently.

“Thank you. I would like to tell them something,” Steve leaned down and pressed a kiss to Tony’s forehead, gathered his thoughts, and turned his eyes to Jane again. He could feel how full of water they were, could barely see her through the tears, but he hoped the determination shone through. “No more. Send out a message to everyone we know and have them spread it far and wide. Gather everyone and have them attack Skull now. We can form an attack plan over the long range coms as they travel.”

“Okay. I’ll go tell Jen,” Jane said, “I’ll give you time with him,” She left the room and Steve was alone with Tony, for the first time since … since they’d had sex the day of the ambush.

Pain crashed down on Steve, and he sunk to his knees, pressing his head against the cot next to Tony’s hip, sobbing. Tony was dead. He wasn’t ever going to smile at him or talk with him or sit next to him as they read in the library or watch him work on the ship. He wouldn’t ever even watch Tony’s eyes do that stupid creepy darkening thing they did when he worked with Extremis.

And he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Tony would have been in better shape if he hadn’t been Steve’s lover. Maybe he wouldn’t have been _fine_ , but he probably wouldn’t have been killed. Skull would have known, would have gathered intelligence on them once stories of Captain America started going around. He would have known that the best way to get to Steve would have been Tony.

Ultimately, it was Skull’s fault, and Steve knew that, but if not for Steve Tony would still be alive. And that was just as painful as anything else.

* * *

 

It both surprised and didn’t surprise Steve how much response they got to the call to arms. Everyone wanted to help. All of the leaders of the rebellion responded, and they were all able to get dozens, if not hundreds of responses, people loading themselves up with as much weapons and supplies as they could get on their ships quickly and then coming to come help fight Skull. Some of them were there to just fight because they, too, were sick of the death and the oppression, but some of them were coming to get revenge for Tony.

And that was heart warming.

Tony’s bed in the med bay had been surrounded by a stasis field, so that he wouldn’t decompose in the time that it took to kill Skull. Steve visited it every day, and because of the way the stasis field was set up, he could reach through and touch Tony, stroke his face, as long as most of his body was outside of the field. Some days it helped, some days it didn’t, and he ended up more of a mess than when he had started.

The _Avenger_  was hiding behind a larger planet in the same system as Schädel, in a spot that was blind to the sensors that Hydra had. They had a probe around the other side of the world, near enough to one of that world’s moons that it was well hidden, and they could spy on Skull while make sure they weren’t going to be detected. The other ships were arriving and assembling around them.

The plan, when everyone was in place, was simple. A little over half of their force would attack from space. The majority of the rest of them would lead a frontal assault on Skull’s ground forces. A small group led by Bucky and Steve, but containing no other leaders, just in case, would sneak into Skull’s facility and attack him.

Right before they set the plan into motion, Steve visited Tony. “Wish me luck, Tony.” He said, reaching through the stasis field and touching Tony’s forehead. He gazed at him, silently urging him to just get up and be okay, then murmured quietly, “I love you. I’m sorry I never told you while you were alive. But I do.”

He stood, pulling away from Tony, and headed off to get to work.

Then he and the others put the plan into motion. They took Defenders between ships to get everyone who was supposed to be in the same spot together and then they moved their whole armada out from behind the planet and into place, descending on Schädel.

Steve moved ships, to be part of the landing team, and the ship he was on now was named the _Black Widow_. It was smaller, and sleek, and Natasha was piloting it. Her part of it was to drop the team off and then join the force attacking from space until it was done. When she dropped them off, she and Bucky shared a brief, fierce kiss and a few murmured words that Steve intentionally ignored. It was a private moment, a moment that was not meant for him, and if it had been him and Tony he wouldn’t want someone else watching it.

Bucky and the rest of the team brought a lot of firepower and several tools, but first they had to make their way through the back end, behind Totenkopf while there was fighting going on in the city. They reached the wall that backed up against Skull’s fortress - thankfully without incident - and Bucky glanced around. He gestured, and they fired up the jet packs they each had, flying up to the nearest window and shooting it in. The gun, which shot some kind of laser or something - Tony had explained them to Steve once, but Steve had been paying more attention to the way Tony was waving his hands around and explaining energetically, and he also didn’t really understand the science anyway - took care of the window in a few shots and silently. They climbed in one at a time and drew their weapons, settling into a basic formation.

They ran into several Hydra agents as they snuck through the fortress, but as they’d guessed, most of them were outside taking care of the main fighting force. They took out the Hydra agents quickly and efficiently, moving through the fortress as much speed as they could.

Eventually, finally, they reached a room with large doors, that looked important before they even got inside. Steve could hear people screaming at each other inside, and one voice rose above the fray. A familiar and hated voice - Skull.

Steve kicked the door in, holding up the shield instinctively, hearing ricochets ping off of it. He peeked out behind it and then threw it, hitting several Hydra goons in succession before the shield hit a wall and came back to him.

The rest of the team engaged with the Hydra agents while Steve and Bucky faced off against Skull. “I admit, this attack, as clumsy as it is, this more complex than I would have thought you capable of,” Red Skull said, a smirk curling his lips. “Did you enjoy the present I left for you in my market? He broke so beautifully.”

That made Steve see red. He roared in anger, lunging at Skull and grappling with him, ignoring his weapons completely. Skull, for his part, was either taken by surprise and reacted or decided it would be satisfying to kill Steve with his bare hands and grappled back, both of them occasionally breaking away and hitting the other, but mostly not really managing to do much damage.

Bucky was at one of the consoles in the room, and flipped a few switches. Steve was only vaguely aware of what he was doing, too busy with Skull to be aware of much else, but he could tell that Bucky was talking to someone on one of the monitors in the command room. But he did notice that the video feed was on, like he’d called someone.

Steve managed to get one of his legs around Skull’s and knocked him to the ground. He held him down with an arm around the neck, and Skull’s head  _exploded_.

Jerking back, Steve looked up to see Bucky standing there, to the side so that Steve wasn’t in his line of fire, with a gun in his hand. On the monitor behind him was an image of Bucky’s back, the gun, Skull’s headless body, and Steve’s shocked face. The end of the fight and Bucky shooting Skull in the head had been broadcast out somewhere. To the rebels? To Skull’s regime? Steve wasn’t sure.

“What the fuck -” Steve asked, heart thudding, hands jittery from adrenaline.

Bucky shoved the gun into the holster and said to the others on the team, “Take the Hydra agents out to the front. I bet a lot of them will be surrendering,” Steve’s head whipped around to see that all of the Hydra agents were either surrendering or had done the same thing they tended to do in the war, and were now dying of self inflicted poisoning. The team filed out, most of them looking various stages of shocked or unbelieving that they’d done it. Bucky turned back to the monitors and pressed a few more buttons, and they all went dark.

“Explain this Bucky,” Steve said, and now that the adrenaline was starting to fade, he had an idea he knew what he’d done, but he wanted to be sure.

“You were going to kill him. I wanted you to keep your hands clean. And I also wanted to broadcast it so that everyone - ally, enemy, neutral party - knows Skull is dead,” Bucky went over and helped Steve stand, looking down at the body.

That was both disturbing and reassuring, in ways. Steve remembered a day, so long ago now, when Bucky had seemed like a somewhat innocent kid. They had met after Steve had joined up in the army, and Bucky had never been completely innocent, but he had been more innocent than this. More innocent than shooting an opponent after making sure that they’d be able to use the shooting for political gain. He supposed both of them had changed, though. And probably for the better, to be honest.

“What now?” Steve asked, eventually, and he could hear how dull his voice was. There was a dull, empty feeling settling into his chest. With Skull still alive, he’d had something to fill the missing spot where Tony had been. Without that revenge to fill that void, things felt dull and lifeless. He felt lost.

“I’m not sure,” Bucky admitted, looking up at Steve and shaking his head.

“I suppose … we have to rebuild,” Steve said, sighing a little. Tony had had so many ideas about this stage. He’d talked about how things could go very right, or very wrong, and had suggested several different ways to organize their governments in order to keep things as peaceful as possible.

“Come on. That starts with getting back to the _Avenger_ ,” Bucky said, reaching out and clamping a hand on Steve’s shoulder. Steve nodded, and then something small and yellowish orange caught his eye. He pulled away and went over to the corner of the room, where he saw a small stone. His eyes widened when he realized what it was, turning to Bucky.

“Buck! I think - the Time Gem - it’s just _laying_  here!!” He said, unable to really get a full sentence out.

Bucky came over, kneeling next to the Gem and nodding. “Yeah. I think that’s what that is. Fuck, Steve,” They glanced at each other for a long moment, and then Bucky said, “You’ve got more willpower, I think. You pick it up. You can fix things.”

The rebellion had talked about the Gems, in passing, about how they might be able to fix things if they ever were able to get a hold of one or several. So Steve knew what to do, and he reached out to take the Gem, concentrating. Before he touched it, he had a perfect idea of what he wanted. Red Skull dead before he ever had the opportunity to travel back in time, before he took over. Then this future never would have happened. But then Tony popped into his mind. Sweet, generous, self sacrificing Tony, and he touched the gem before he could think of anything more than that he just wanted Tony alive again.

The Gem flashed, yellow orange, and disappeared. Bucky blinked and rubbed his eyes, then frowned at Steve. “Things are the same. What’d you do?”

“I don’t know. But we need to get back to the _Avenger_. I think I … I think I did something selfish,” Steve admitted.

“Stark,” Bucky said, then sighed and shook his head. He didn’t look mad, though, just resigned, and he had a little smile on his face. “Figures.”

They ended up burning the building down, once they were sure all of their people were out, mostly out of sheer vindictive pleasure, then they headed back to the Avenger. It had landed a ways away from Totenkopf, and so it didn’t take them long to reach the ship. It, the surrounding ships, and the surrounding land were all thrumming with activity. People were helping the wounded into the ships or into medical tents that had been set up outside the ships, and Steve recognized several people running back and forth between the ships.

Natasha had set up a guard around the ships and their makeshift camp, and she touched Bucky’s arm, tenderly, when she saw them. She looked over Steve, too, but that was perfunctory. She was far more concerned with Bucky.

“You should have stayed with her,” Steve said, heading inside the _Avenger_  and towards the med bay.

“I’ll go back to her when I’m sure you and Stark are okay,” Bucky said, shaking his head.

They reached the med bay faster than Steve ever had before, and there, in the middle of a crowded med bay surrounded by half the crew, Edwin, and quite a few people that Steve had never even met - all of them uninjured and clearly there just to see him - was Tony. He was sitting up, pale with dark circles under his eyes, but gloriously alive. Jane was by his side, looking over him with a frown of concentration on her face, and Jim was holding on to him tightly, hand gripping Tony’s shoulder.

Steve felt frozen in the doorway, staring at Tony, until Bucky nudged him gently and Steve propelled himself inwards, saying hoarsely, “ _Tony_.”

Tony’s eyes flicked over to Steve and he said, “Steve!”

The word snapped Steve into action, and he was by Tony’s side in moments, taking his hand and holding tightly. Tony reached up and tugged Steve down into a kiss. His mouth tasted dry, stale - like he’d gone a very long time without cleaning his teeth or eating or drinking, and Steve did not want to think about why he tasted like that - but he was warm and firm and loving.

Steve broke the kiss after several moments, pressing their foreheads together and running a slightly trembling hand through Tony’s hair, over his cheeks and jaw and neck, down to his shoulders and chest, assessing damage and also taking in the fact that, despite the already faded scars he could see peeking out of his clothes and general weariness, Tony was there and whole.

“I have Extremis again,” Tony said after a long time, reaching up and wiping at Steve’s face with a thumb, rubbing away tears that Steve had realized he was crying but just didn’t care about. Tony deserved every single one of them.

“Do they think that’s what healed you?” Steve asked, glancing around at everyone else and then looking back at Tony. It would make sense for the Time Gem to work like that.

“Not exactly. It might have helped, but there still would have needed to be a spark of life to start him going,” Jane explained.

“We found the Time Gem,” Steve said, sitting down on the side of Tony’s bed, making sure not to sit on his hand or legs, or any of the tubes or wires going into him. “Bucky and I did, near Red Skull.”

“You used it to bring Tony back?” Jim asked. He was still holding on to Tony’s shoulder, and his hold tightened marginally as he asked.

“Accidentally,” Bucky said, and Steve flushed slightly.

“I meant to prevent Skull from having ever traveled through time in the first place. But at the last second, right before I touched it, I thought of him. The way he was after everything had happened. And then when nothing changed I realized that it probably took my thoughts about wanting Tony back and made them reality,” Steve said, ducking his head a little.

“There’s a lot of suffering that could have been prevented if you’d stopped Skull before this had all begun,” Luke said. “But there’s also probably some good that would have never happened. Jessica, Danny and I probably never would have met. We never would have had Danielle.”

“And there’s really no way to know for sure the way things would have turned out,” Jim pointed out. “You are talking about changing things from hundreds of years ago. You can’t be sure that anything you changed would change things the way you would want.”

“Not that you didn’t still sort of fuck up,” Jessica pointed out, “But they’re right. We can’t know what would have changed if you’d actually used the Time Gem like that. Things could have ended up even worse. We all could have ended up dead, or never even born.”

Tony didn’t voice his opinion, but Steve could imagine what he might say. Tony would have probably preferred Steve use the Time Gem to benefit everyone, even if it meant Tony stayed dead, but Steve also knew that Tony was probably very happy to have more time with him.

“Everyone except Steve out,” Jane said, in the lull of conversation.

“Why does he get to stay?” Jim asked, even as he squeezed Tony’s shoulder in a farewell.

“Because I can make the rest of you go, but I’ll probably have to pick up Mjolnir and boot Steve out with it to get him to go. Now go. Tony needs his rest,” Jane said.

Bucky snorted. “Yeah, leave Steve here. Rest is the last thing Tony will get,” The others chuckled a little, but they all headed out together, and eventually only Jane, Steve, and Tony were left in the med bay.

“I’m not kidding, Tony. You need to rest,” Jane said, firmly.

“He will,” Steve said.

“I’m tired,” Tony said, “I will.”

Jane smiled, and nodded, leaving as well. Once she was gone, Tony shifted a little so he was laying down with plenty of room beside him for Steve, letting Steve cuddle with him, pressed in close, if he lay on his side. Steve pressed kisses to his hair and face, fingers trailing over him reverently.

“I love you,” Steve said, quietly, after several long moments.

“I love you, too, Steve,” Tony said, kissing him back gently and sounding tired.

* * *

 

As usual with Extremis, Tony’s recovery progressed remarkably quickly. The much more difficult thing was the fact that he clearly remembered what happened and, after that first night, woke in terror as often as not. Sometimes Steve woke first and managed to wake Tony before he got too bad, but sometimes Tony was screaming before Steve knew what was going on. The first time it happened, they had the others banging on their door, Jen using her code to get them all in, within moments.

Eventually the dreams slowed, and Steve couldn’t help noticing that their intensity and frequency happened to be directly tied to if they were planetside or not. When the _Avenger_  was in space, the ship turned on and vibrating under them, Tony seemed to sleep far easier than he did when they were effectively at port, waiting to regroup like they had been immediately after killing Skull or trying to get the resistance fighters to meet and organize, which was their first step in establishing a new and hopefully far more effective government.

They often hopped between worlds on their way to those meetings - as did the other fighters - meeting each other on various planets as a way to keep neutrality. If one day they met on зима and the next they met on Genosha then they hopefully couldn’t be accused of favoritism. They wanted to create a united government where all of the planets had a say in how things were run. If they all had a say, then hopefully they would jointly be able to prevent anyone from gaining too much power, from doing exactly what Red Skull had done.

One evening, on the way to a meeting on one of the worlds that they were considering to host the united government because it was uninhabited but was habitable, Steve found himself unable to sleep. He eased out of bed, not wanting to wake Tony, and grabbed his computer. After a bit of wandering he ended up in the library, sitting there and reading in one of the comfortable chairs. Though he’d brought his computer, he picked one of the actual books and began to read, his computer sized down and in his pocket.

Tony eventually joined him, kissing his neck as he came into the room.

“The bed is cold without you,” He grumbled, nuzzling against Steve a moment. He then sat in his own chair, pulling his computer out of his pocket and enlarging it, opening up a book and starting to read.

“Sorry, sweetheart. I was hoping I wouldn’t wake you,” Steve said, reaching over and patting Tony’s knee for a moment before relaxing in the chair. Tony rarely got a good night’s sleep anyway. Steve interrupting it wasn’t something he wanted.

“It’s fine. I want up if you can’t sleep,” Tony shook his head. They read in silence for a while, comfortable together, before Tony asked, “Are you really happy here?”

“Of course I am. I love you, and I love what we’re building together. I love traveling, being able to move from place to place like we do,” Steve marked his place in his book and set it aside, leaning forward and watching Tony. “Why?”

“You’re so good at leading people. I wonder if you’d be better suited leading one of the planets, or the united government,” Tony said.

“No. I want to stay with you. I’m happy with you. My home is with you,” Steve leaned forward and kissed him, lightly.

“I want to keep doing what we were doing. But legally this time. Bringing food and medicine to people in need, protecting people who need it. Bringing down corrupt governments if we have to,” Tony said after a moment. “I don’t want to be involved in the new government any more than we have to be.”

“That sounds fantastic,” Steve said, smiling wide. They would build something amazing together, and he couldn’t wait to get started.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to a [Serbian Proverb](https://www.google.com/search?q=be+humble+for+you+are+made+of+earth+serbian+proverb&safe=off&rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS436US436&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=667&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj56In2paPJAhUE4CYKHfsgBdM4ChD8BQgGKAE&dpr=1) that is quoted as going "Be humble for you are made of earth, be noble for you are made of stars."
> 
> Much thanks to both [Cloudyjenn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudyjenn/pseuds/cloudyjenn) and [MissBecky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/missbecky/pseuds/missbecky) for their support and cheer leading and letting me whine at them about the fic when I really didn't want to be editing. You are both amazing women! *hugs*
> 
> Edit: I forgot to note this when I posted but I do want to make note of it. In this fic, Danny Rand looks a little bit different than he does in 616 because ... well, because he [should](http://thenerdsofcolor.org/2014/03/11/marvel-please-cast-an-asian-american-iron-fist/).
> 
> Specific content warnings: Tony is tortured to death. We see the start of his torture, but not all of it. He gets better, though. The Red Skull is killed on screen. He doesn't get better. There is some consensual sexual content, between Steve and Tony, but it's not much - non penetrative, in every sense of the word.


End file.
